Official GW Adeptus Mechanicus models!

I'm so excited about the up-coming official GW release of Adeptus Mechanicus skitarii! The new models really capture the feel of the tech-guard end of the skitarii spectrum, in my mind. They're very different from the skitarii found in Titanicus (who were almost feral - with tattoos, totems, and so on, and were the guys I was emulating with my ork-based conversions), but they really match up to the guys from Dark Apostle and lots of other sources. And match well to lots of fan-made converted Skitarii.

And, of course, the crazy chicken-rider Dunestrikers are absolutely amazing. I'm just blown away by them. Their general look is mad, their details tie-in beautifully with the Knights, and their rules look very fun. I can't wait!

 I'm a bit less keen on the stalk-tank, but maybe my mind will be changed by better pictures.

 And the idea that this is just the beginning, that Codex: Skitarii might be followed by further codices and eventually a full AdMech codex (possibly including the Knights as well)? That's very exciting!

http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/topic/302401-rumours-mechanicus-skitarii-more-pictures/ is a great thread on Bolter & Chainsword with all the pictures and lots of rumours.

My Army So Far

I love the Adeptus Mechanicus! There are so many really cool converted armies of them out there, with such strong themes. Mine's not really one of them, it's more of a random collection of pieces that I've made over 5 years or so. But it's kept me entertained! Long post this, sorry... Next I want to add the new GW Knight Titans (if they do make them!), all the lovely Forgeworld pieces, and I have a set of Skullz models sitting around waiting to be painted. Then an armies on parade board... There's always something new to add! All the photos are on Flickr here The whole army: The left flank, with lots of ranged Skitarii converted from Space Marines in the front: The centre, with a variety of leaders and elites: The right flank, with feral Skitarii converted from Orks in the front: Some Praetorians, converted from Tyranid Warrior torsos: Some more Praetorians, a mix of Ogres and classic ork warbike tracks: And yet more Praetorians, again converted from Ogres: Not really sure what these are! Made from Tyranid Warrior lower halves, obviously: Robots (or maybe dreadnoughts?) These are inspired by the old Space Crusade dreadnoughts, with hulls from Forgefiends (& an old Space Crusade dread), and legs from IG Sentinels: More robots! Ork Killer Kans here. They remind me a bit of Wall-E, I like them: A final triad of robots/dreadnoughts. Dreadnoughts on sentinel legs, obviously: And one big boss robot, some sort of Forgeworld grot-controlled mega-armoured dude: My Knight Baron, a converted Decimator: My Knight Paladin, a converted Dreadknight: My Knight Lancer, converted from a Blood Slaughterer: And my Knight Crusader, converted from a Defiler: When GW finally release their Knight Titan, I'll probably swap the head for a sentinel...

Armies on Parade

Hello, world. It's been a while!

I'm currently revamping my army, preparing for Armies on Parade. In my view a good Armies on Parade entry needs 5 things:

• A cool theme
• Great basic models
• Big wow-factor centrepieces
• Interesting details that reward closer study
• An impressive board

Point 1 - let's face it, "Adeptus Mechanicus" is an awesome theme!

Point 2 - I've tried my best! I've now got a huge pile of infantry of two basic types - a heavily armoured skitarii/protector and a more combat-orientated skitarii/servitor (inspired by Titanicus).

Here are pics of the skitarii, with their old WestWind heads replaced so that they're 100% GW bits (a very boring task). Pics:

Which means I'm on to point 3, a big centrepiece!

For the AdMech there's a wealth of options available - bizarre tanks, hulking robots, ogryn-servitors, and so on. And, my favourite, Knights or Knight-Titans or whatever you want to call them. I love the old Epic Knights. Larger than a dreadnought, smaller than a warhound, they were 1-man humanoidish Imperial Mecha. And now's my chance to add them to my Adeptus Mechanicus army, hurrah!

Inspiration: Asymmetrical Xeno

I've just found a very nice "Cult of the Dragon" AdMech army.

Made mostly by mixing Iron Brotherhood and Necron Warrior parts, it's a very dark and evil looking force. Marvellous!

Check it out here: http://www.lounge.belloflostsouls.net/showthread.php?p=111032

Converting & Painting: Avatar of the Machine God

The Nightbringer has long been one of my favourite GW models, and I've been dying for an excuse to buy him. Now that I'm playing Adeptus Mechanicus, and in our campaign I've been siding with the Necrons, this seemed the perfect time...

This is a very simple little conversion, just to get him finished & on the table as soon as possible. The shoulder pads were Space Marine tank crew, the axe head was a vintage techmarine's, and the backpack is a few Cities of Death bits (to match my Techno-Magi Lord).

Rules-wise he'll be a Daemon Prince when I'm running my guys as CSMs.





Also, have a preview of my Skitarii Assault Maniple, coming soon:

Inspiration: Work In Progress Forum

The Work In Progress forum http://z11.invisionfree.com/Work_In_Progress/index.php is one of the best-kept 40k secrets on the web, an elite group of mind-blowingly cool convert-a-holics and scratch-builders.

Their Inquisition board includes plenty awesome of Adeptus Mechanicus conversions.

Some of my favourite Adeptus Mechanicus related conversions on WIP are those made by Malton Necromancer, also shown on his photobucket.

His tall skinny Grand Artificer was a clear influence on my Techno-Magi, his heavy praetorian/ogryns made from WFB Ogres are excellent, and I love all his walkers and skitarii and general craziness.

But my favourite of all the WIP Adeptus Mechanicus posts has to be this heavy dreadnought made GreyDeath (the chap who runs the forum). Mixing sentinel legs and a dreadnought torso looks so good! I really want to make some of these for my AdMech at some point- possibly I'll use this as the basis for a Knight Titan?

Converting & Painting: My Army

Here are some pictures of all my converted and painted Adeptus Mechanicus models from GW Oxford's cabinet nicely laid out on their pretty cityscape board. This is probably about 1,200 pts, possibly 1,500 pts if I put in Wolf Guard and upgraded my Rune Priest & Iron Priests. In my complete model collection I've also got an additional Protector and Protector Support squad, plus I'm working on my first Feral Skitarii squad (to be Blood Claws) and my Avatar of the Machine God (C'tan / Daemon Prince). Once the Assault squad is complete I'll be up to about 2,000 pts, hurrah!

Converting & Painting: My army in GW Oxford's cabinet

I won a painting competition at GW Oxford with my Technomagi Aether-Adept (best Over-14s Single Minature). Which was a surprise! I so didn't expect to win that I left the model behind and wandered off for a few hours, missing the actual competition... Luckily it was decided by voting not any actual guage of quality, and mine was the most converted model so impressed the most people! Some of the staff then said I could put my whole army in their store Cabinet. Woo :)

Converting & Painting: Techno-Magi Aether-Adept

This rather tall fellow is my army's leader and HQ choice. I normally run him as a "Techno-Magi Aether-Adept" (Librarian/Rune Priest/Sorceror/Inquisitor), a techpriest dabbling in machines to channel psychic powers.

His upper body is all fairly standard Space Marine or Space Wolf bits, plus lots of Cities of Death pieces (the backpack & the base of the staff) and a classic Techmarine backpack's claw for the top of his staff. The lower body is a mix of plastruct tubes and green stuff. The arms are magnetic, so I can change his weaponry if I ever feel like it.

I've always dreaded painting human skin. So for this guy I went for grey/white pale dead skin, trying to capture some of the Gothic wierdness of the Adeptus Mechanicus you get in 40k artwork & fluff. I really like the effect!

This was also the first time I've really done any highlighting/blending/layering apart from drybrushing, on his big glowing backpack. It's very much not perfect but I'm happy with it for a first attempt! I really, really need to thin my paints next time.

Converting & Painting: Razorbricks

When I first made this army, it was entirely footslogging. But, two nights before my first game, someone told me I had to have more mobility so I had to get razorbacks or rhinos. But how to make them fit my Mechanicus GrimDarkGothick theme?

I was broke at the time, so rooted about in my bits box and saw what came out... Luckily I found some shockingly painted & rather beaten up an old-school rhino and predator. With the tracks removed and stuck onto a few Cities of Death bits, I created my mobile shrines to the Machine God (rapidly nick-named "The Razorbricks"). The gun-servitors are made from Catachans with Ork heavy weapons. They're magnetic, so I can easily pull them off and stick on a hatch to make them into Rhinos.

The paintjob is, as always for me, rather basic and tabletop-quality: black spray; Boltgun Metal drybrush; details picked out in various reds, whites/greys & bronze; Badab Black wash. Does the job, quick & easy!

Army List & Battle Report: 1,000 pts vs Dark Eldar (win)

My Adeptus Mechanicus were designed to be quite flexible as to which codex they could count as: they could be Space Marines, Space Wolves, Dark Angels, Witchhunters or even Necrons. In their first outing they were Space Wolves- largely because Grey Hunters are better than Tactical Squads, whilst Iron Priests & Long Fangs are just so cheap!

This army list was made for a 1,000 pt Battle Missions / Apocalypse campaign weekend at Games Workshop Oxford. This was the first time I'd played 40k in over half a dozen years...

HQ [100 pts]
Technomagi Aether-Adept (Rune Priest) - 100

ELITES [90 pts]
Technomagi Machine-Seer (Iron Priest w/ 1 Servo-arm Servitor, 2 Heavy Bolter Servitors) - 90

TROOPS [545 pts]
Protector Maniple (10 Grey Hunters w/ 1 Power Fist, 2 Plasma Guns) - 185
Protector Maniple (6 Grey Hunters w/ 1 Power Fist, 1 Meltagun; Razorback w/ Dozer, Armour) - 180
Protector Maniple (6 Grey Hunters w/ 1 Power Fist, 1 Meltagun; Razorback w/ Dozer, Armour) - 180

HEAVY SUPPORT [265 pts]
Protector Support Maniple (6 Long Fangs w/ 1 Heavy Bolter, 4 Missile Launchers) - 135
Protector Support Maniple (6 Long Fangs w/ 2 Heavy Bolter, 3 Missile Launchers) - 130

MISSION
We used the Prepared Assault mission, and I was the attacker- so there was an objective in the centre, one in the middle of his half of the board and one that I got to place in his half of the board. The battlefield was fairly plain except for a 3-story building right in the centre. I placed the third objective on the centre line of the board, on the far right side.

ARMIES & DEPLOYMENT
He had two big squads of Warriors, and a very tooled up Archon with Incubi & Drazhar in a Raider. One squad was on the central building/objective, the other was in a ruin near the back of his side of the board (on my left), the Raider was behind the building waiting to pounce. I deployed one Razorback ready to grab that objective and one ready to head deep into his deployment zone. The Rune Priest and big unit were set to charge towards the central objective, whilst the shooty squads were set up along my back board edge.

BATTLE
Then we shot at each other, lots. The Archon, Incubi & Drazhar carved up one Long Fang squad but was left in an exposed position- and went down under a wall of fire. I also wiped out the central squad. Meanwhile he took out the Razorback squad heading into his board half and most of the Rune Priest's squad.
It ended as a victory- I held the far right objective whilst the remains of Rune Priest's Squad were contesting the central objective with the second Warrior Squad.

LESSONS LEARNT
The game confirmed to me just how shooty my army was. It was bloody, very bloody!

Converting & Painting: Praetorian Protector Maniples

I started my Adeptus Mechanicus army because I'd been given a load of Space Crusade Space Marines. Retro-tastic. My first idea was to make them Pretty Marines. Then I realised that was a bad idea.

Next I hit on the idea of making them an Iron Hands successor chapter with added steampunky goodness. It went astray a bit?

I ended up with my basic Protector Maniple. Fluff-wise these are heavily armoured warriors created by the Adeptus Mechanicus of Demiterra Nemusordo. They're controlled by servitor brains but are largely robotic not organic. In game terms, these are my Tactical Squads / Grey Hunters / Plague Marines / Thousand Sons.

Some steps in the creation of models for this army. As you can see, the torsoes are plastic Space Marines- I've got a mix of multipart ones and ones from boxed game sets (Space Crusade, 40k 2nd Ed, Assault on Black Reach). They have their legs and heads removed, and the chests filed smooth. The shoulder pads are filed smooth and then have greenstuff Adeptus Mechanicus symbols added, as are their backs. The lower half is made from three bits of wire plus a load of modelling putty. Finally the necks are plastic tube and the heads are Westwind Productions WW2 gasmasked heads, cut in half to just leave the odd helmet and the huge lenses.

Painting is fairly basic. Black spray undercoat. Robes are Blood Red, metal is Boltgun Metal, details are Skull White or Dwarf Bronze. Everything is washed with Badab Black, then neatened up a bit. Finally eyes, power weapons etc are Scorpion Green over Skull White.


A whole lot of Protectors in various stages of completion! The painted squad and the back two rows are Protector Maniples (Tactical-equivalents), the squads in the front are Protector Support Maniples (Devastator-equivalents). You can also just about make out a standard IG Techpriest Engineseer, there to be a Techpriest-equivalent.

Inspiration: Hortwerth

There are some stunning Adeptus Mechanicus armies out roaming free on the Interwebs. One that particularly inspired me was Hortwerth's, which uses Codex: Imperial Guard.

His first Adeptus Mechanicus army is displayed here: http://www.warseer.com/forums/showthread.php?t=30799
It's very nice. Tank heavy, with Bretonnian bodies forming the majority of his troops. Well done, and not beyond the realms of possibility to convert.

However one army wasn't good enough for Hortwerth! He then set out to make a second army, sculpting most of the models himself.
http://www.warseer.com/forums/showthread.php?t=96161
It's awesome! The Knight Titans are immense, and the basic models are all just stunning. And, big advantage, you can buy them online here: http://www.shop.microartstudio.com/iron-brotherhood-c-36_43.html. Although of course that means you can't use them in official GW events. And I doubt I could paint them as well as he has!