20110708

Tyranids Ate My Family

Apropos to my small band of stragglers (more doomed than the Eldar) I borrowed a concept from the fantasy equivalents - slayers! And since there's no trolls in space (hmmm... idea) he's going after the ravenous gribblies of the Tyranid horde. Enter the beastslayer!


Angry? Angsty? Axey? Check, check, check.

This guy is based on a spare Marauder trollslayer I had in my "to be ebayed" pile - the marauder range of dwarves being (collectively) one of my very favourites, they're also of a similar time-period to the Squat miniatures he needs to fit in with so the scale is a reasonable match, unlike the modern Dwarf range who have both grown in height and gut comparatively.

That said, his feet and hands were gigantic, especially compared to the Cadian arms I'm using for the rest of the crew, so they were cut down and replaced respectively. The models' bracers became gauntlets with the use of a space marine gauntlet.

The sci-fi-ification process continued with a simple weapon swap (the hands had already been removed after all) from axes to chain-axes (and a bit of a swinging pose), and a bionic set of facial features. I figured I needed to do something to hide his relatively large gut, and without clothing too. It seemed appropriate to give him a string of primed grenades - the 41st millennium slayer would definitely go out Leon style I think :)

I also managed to get a hold of the living ancestor model I was after:


Small conversion here, just adding a shortened Cadian arm with some flowing cloth at the shoulder joint. I was semi-tempted to go for the sidecar ancestor and model him into a the third (and last) of the space crusade dreadnought chassis I have as he has quite the inert psychic feeling about him (like General Stryker's kid from X2) but they just go for a bomb if and when you can even find them, so for now this yet-to-be-named living ancestor still has the use of his legs. 

I have interesting Space Hulk rules planned for him...

4 comments:

  1. The model looks awesome...Im jealous. I wish I had a similar one to that to use in my upcoming Penal Legion unit of Squats.
    Also I hadn't thought of it yet, but now I need to look out for a load of chain axe bits to use to enhance their weapons. Time to dive back into my bitbox.
    I am looking forward to seeing a lineup of your Squat-Hulk team though. And you are right the Living Ancestor in sidecar does have that feel, of course I was actually looking for one on foot but could not find one.
    Oh well!

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  2. You can get them relatively cheaply from bits companies out of the Khorne Berzerkers set, which would probably work quite well with your aesthetic, but I just cut up some chainswords and stuck them on upside down to an axe haft.

    FWIW, Avatars of War have just made a range of plastic slayers that might suit your penal squads.

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  3. I know ;)

    I am awaiting the delivery of two boxes, which should net me enough models for three Penal Legion Squads.

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  4. As I am working a night shift at the moment (overtime so it is really slow), I was reading up on my Imperial Armour; and I just came across a ruleset in volume 9 called "Blood in the Void". This has rules and such for running a 'regular' Warhammer 40K game set inside space ships and such. They even suggest using Space Hulk boards etc if one has access to them.
    I immediately thought of giving you a heads up :)

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