Dark Imperium, Week Two

So, spent the weekend putting some of the Dark Imperium models together.  Let’s go over a couple observations and impressions, from the modeling and customizing point of view

First observation... A complaint I had with the DarkVengeance set was that all of the Space Marines were firmly Dark Angels.  All the iconography was sculpted on the models—sometimes quite a bit of it.  It was gorgeous, no question, but it was also a lot of work if you wanted to use them for anything else.  Despite the prominent display of Ultramarines colors and heraldry on the box and promo pics, Dark Imperium avoids that issue, and the Primaris look fantastic without being pinned down to any particular Chapter.  Which is cool, because I plan on using them with my Relictors.

Of course, the flipside to this is that the opposing team is... well, 100% Nurgle.  There’s not a single model here that’s even vaguely something else. Which is great if you have a Death Guard army, or have been wanting one (it is a full army, after all), but otherwise... it’s a bit limiting.

Past that...

Another DV issue was that many of the models (especially the Chaos Chosen) went together in really bizarre ways.  Heads and arms would be a single piece connected by the trim on a shoulderpad.  Legs would be split lengthwise through the kneecap.  It was almost as if GW went out of their way to cut the models in the most bizarre ways possible.

The Dark Imperium models go together in much more basic standard patterns. Heads and arms are separate on a lot of the models—standard connection points, although it’s worth pointing out that the arms tend to be complete-with-shoulder pad, just in case you had clever ideas.  This means there’s a bunch of easy tweaks to do that can customize the army without resorting to cuts or filing or putty. 

The simplest one is head swaps within the set. Many of these models have separate heads, and they all use the standard neck-ball that Space Marines of all types have used for the past... what, almost twenty years?  I swapped the heads of these two Plague Marines and didn’t have to cut or trim a single thing.  

Also, because of that standard socket, most older head would fit on these models, too (and without too much of a scale problem).  Yeah, it wouldn’t make much sense for a Primaris to wear a Mk 7 helmet, but it’d be simple to work a lot more bare heads into the army to give them a less straight-out-of-the-box look.  I bet some of the Space Wolves unhelmeted heads would look good, too.  Or if the Plague Marines look a little too Nurgley for your particular army, it would be easy enough to swap in some regular Chaos Marine heads to bring them down a notch.

Helpful Hint—I’d perhaps avoid heads with bionic implants for Primaris soldiers.  After all, they’ve been in so few battles at this point, how many of them would have lots of replacement parts...?

The PoxWalkers worried me a little.  There’s ten variants (two of each in the set), and they all have pretty extreme horns. Silly as it may sound, they’re so extreme that it actually makes them all very distinctive.  It felt obvious they were repeating poses/models within the squad (to me, anyway). So I shaved off a few of the horns and spikes. It helped break them up a bit, and it also helped to inch the whole squad a little closer to my existing plague zombies.

Worth noting—I tried to make those cuts as smooth as possible, and I saved all the horns and spikes.  We’ll see how the final rules (and squad sizes) shape up for PoxWalkers when that new codex comes out in the hopefully-near future, and then I might move some of the spikes and some old skeleton horns over onto my zombies so they all look good together.

Also, one last thing to consider. All the Primaris Marines wear Mk X armor.  Every one of them.  Which really means the only difference between the troops, the sergeants, and the lieutenants is the paint jobs.  Want to give all those guys helmets?  Just trade with friends and give that guy a red helmet.  Want to use that unhelmeted Lieutenant as another sergeant?  Done!  Silly as it may sound, the uniformity gives us a bit more space to mix and match

Is there a lot of room for making this model  into that? Well, we may need to see the full Primaris book before knowing that for sure.  But there’s definitely lots of conversion and cutomizing possibilities within this set.

Next time, I may show off a few of them.

Dark Imperium

Well, it’s been about five years since the last Warhammer 40K starter set.  A bunch of us from the Atomic Warlords site sat around this weekend with some rum, the new Dark Imperium set, and a few of the index books. We had many thoughts. Most of them positive.

Marcus was going to talk about the revised game mechanics over at Atomic Warlords. Very short version—they’ve moved 40K a lot toward Age of Sigmar.  Not all that way, but if you’re somebody who really loathes those game mechanics, you’re not going to be happy with the grim dark future...

I wanted to talk about the value, though.  I know a ton of people have already broken it down in different ways. I juat wanted to do a nice, simple "how much does this save us" sort of view...

We’ve got two HQ units (the Primaris Captain and the Lord of Contagion).  Going off the average clamshell prices for single figs, it wouldn’t be outrageous to say these would be $30 to $35 each.  GW’s been getting slightly better about pricing, though, and there’s some online retailers who offer nice discounts, so let’s say they’re only going to cost $25 each-- $50 for the two of them.

There’s two more character figs for the Plague Marines, so there’s another $50.  There are three more Primaris characters, too, but Marcus pointed out it wouldn’t be surprising to see them as some kind of command squad.  Let’s conservatively call them $40 altogether.

There’s also that Foetid Bloat-Drone. It’s dreadnaught sized, so I don’t have trouble believing it could be a $35 or $40 set once we get one with options.  We’ll call it $35.

At this point, we’re already over the box set’s price tag of $160.  We haven’t even added in the three five-man Primaris squads, or the jump troops, or the Plague Marine squad, or that twenty-man PoxWalker squad (probably another $40,easy).  Heck there’s a full-sized, hardcover rulebook, which sells for $60 on its own.

Also, something we realized late Sunday night.  This is a very complete, balanced set.  It’s two actual, viable armies that are pretty fairly matched, not a couple random things that look good individually but don’t really match up (y’know, like a bunch of cultists vs Dark Angels terminators...).

This set is a freakin’ amazing value, even using my very conservative prices.  Half price on everything, if not more.  Split the box with someone, Chaos and Primaris, and get an army for $80.  Heck, let them keep the rulebook, haggle a bit, and get your half for $60 (heck, GW’s giving the basic rules away for free).  That’s maybe a third what you’d pay for either set.  Literally 66% off!

If you don’t have a ton of money to spend (been there, believe me) but really want to get into the game... this might be worth saving up for.

Cheap Helbrute Conversion

So, lots of people are already talking about the new Horus Heresy plastics. I might at some point in the future, too.  For the moment, though, I wanted to look back at the last big sci-fi set...

           

(okay, seriously, how do we describe the connection between 30K/Heresy and 40K?  Are they just the #0K games? Imperium-based games?  Grim Future games?)

           

...their last box set from mankind’s grim future, and show something fun and cheap you can do with that.

           

You can still find lots of Dark Vengeance stuff online, most of it at half to 1/5th what you’d pay for them as individual units. A full tactical squad is about twenty bucks.  A lot of HQ characters are just two or three dollars.  And you can usually find the Dark Vengeance Dreadna—sorry, old habits—Helbrute for under ten bucks.

Now, as I’ve mentioned before, there’s a reason for this.  Like most of the Dark Vengeance models, the Helbrute’s a block of plastic that takes some serious time and effort if you want to do any major conversions (that said—I’ve seen some great ones).  But it is possible to do some neat looking ones on the cheap without half as much effort.

           

For example...

           

This particular Helbrute is going to be named Occulus Blight, and it’ll be joining my Death Guard.  Before I even started putting him together, I rolled up a little ball of green stuff.  A little bigger than a pea, a little smaller than a marble.  I rolled this back and forth between my fingers until it was as round and smooth as I could get it.  Then I very carefully pushed it into the hood/collar hole where the little face piece would normally go.  I didn’t want the teeth/claws around the hole to gouge the surface of the ball.

Once this was in place, I stretched the putty out on either side to help hold it in place. Again, I had to be careful so I didn’t force it into the teeth/claws on the other side. This was tricky and I had to try twice.  Fortunately, on something this simple, messing up just means pulling the blob out and rolling it smooth again. So don’t panic too much.  It maybe took ten minutes from starting to mix the green stuff to having it in place.  I let it  dry for another fifteen minutes—face up! I didn’t want its own weight to make a flat spot on the ball—and then assembled the Helbrute as normal.

Look at that.  One big eye in the socket.  Much Nurgle.  So pestilent.

 

I did a few quick detail things.  An old scenic rubble piece went on the base.  I snipped off the chains that hang from the power fist and added some “tentacles” made from the horns of a Chaos Marine helmet.  It’s hard to tell, but I also added a big tentacle to his power plant—one of the ones from the old mutation sprue.  It looks really good there, and it’s got me thinking some of those bulkier pieces might work really well on other Chaos dreadna—sorry, did it again—Helbrutes.

I didn’t glue the front plate-armor-hull piece in place because I want to paint the eye without too many extra bits around it. So I’ll prime those seperately and assemble them later.  As one last bit of detail, I added a centered horn to the armor plate.  It’s something I pulled from the bits bins at one point—I think it might be from the Chaos Terminators set.  Central horns are distinctively Nurgle in 40K (and related games).

All in all, maybe an hour to make a distinctive Helbrute.  And about a third of that was just digging up parts and mixing drinks.

(Primed and basic paint pictures coming this weekend)

One Very Last Dark Vengeance Update

Last one.  Honest.  And it’s kind of a cheat...

I’ve mentioned once or thrice before that the Dark Vengeance kit has really solid, static figures that aren’t going to offer many options for anyone except really serious converters.  For those of us who can’t risk wrecking a model on an idea, the kit just doesn’t have a lot of flex room. The best we can hope for area few minimal tweaks that, if done right, can change the feel of a model.  This idea’s a little more advanced than some of those, but still doesn’t take a lot of work.  I’m also going to be a bit of a hypocrite—I’m suggesting this one and I have no plans of trying it myself.

Anyways...

The Dark Vengeance set comes with five Deathwing Terminators.  They’re absolutely beautiful sculpts.  As many people have noted, though, with all their iconography it’s tough to use them as anything except Dark Angels or a closely-related chapter.  It struck me on a long drive, though, that there is a completely different way for Chaos players to use them.

In the past I’ve tried to scratch-build my own Obliterators, because I’ve never been fond of the financial price vs. points ratio.  And that’s before GW cut them down more and more from the firepower nightmares they’re supposed to be.  Mutilators felt like a cheap (or not-so-cheap) attempt to spin off them that had some really rushed models. 

First things first, for any of these, is the head.  Before assembling the Terminators, take a sharp knife and very carefully cut off the helmets.  On a few of the models (or if you already put them together) you may need to carve them out of the collar/ hood they’re in.  A pair of clippers will help with this.  So will a drill.  It’s a bit troublesome, drilling into beautiful Terminator helmets, I know.  Just try to preserve the collar  if the helmet itself is destroyed, it’s no big deal.  The idea is to create a socket big enough that you can drop in a new head.  Any of the bare chaos heads would be fine.  If you can get your hands on some of the old mutation sprue ones, that’s even better.

Next, scrape off any symbols or iconography.  Shoulderpads, dangling icons, any of that stuff.  Purity seals and Imperial eagles can go, too.  Don’t worry if these aren’t perfect afterwards.  There’s going to be a big cover-up phase.

Helpful Hint--You may want to skip converting the Deathwing sergeant/captain.  With his robes, wings, and all his iconography, he may just be too much work.

If you have them, it’s also tempting to use some of the oversized Demon Prince shoulderpads to bulk up these models even more.  I’ve got a few of the old metal ones, and I’m sure there’s some spares floating around from somebody’s Fantasy Demon Prince.  I’m a little torn on using them, but if you’ve got them... well, it’s an option.

Now, for Obliterators, you need weapons.  Fortunately, that’s something most 40K players have lots of hanging around.  If you don’t have them yourself, Imperial Guard players probably have a bunch of lascannons and flamers, and possibly a few plasma cannons if they’ve bought some of the new Sentinels.  Heck, the Terminators come with power fists and an assault cannon.

Helpful Hint – If you just want a quick, cheap way to make a few big barrels, use the round sections of sprue.  You can drill out the center and voila—instant gun barrel.  Two of them one on top of the other would work as a fine multi-melta with the right paint job.  My scratch-built obliterators up above have three or four of these barrels between them.  I kind of like them because a big generic gun barrel can shoot anything.

To give the Obliterators the best look, I’d cut off the Terminator hands at the wrist and replace them with one of the larger, more prominent weapons.  The lascannon, assault cannon, or multi-melta would work well.  Don’t worry if it’s a messy join—it’ll all get covered.  Then maybe attach a few smaller weapons around that one.  They don’t need to be pressed flat together, so don’t worry about a little space between barrels. 

Mutilator weapons aren’t much harder.  The Terminators come with a chainfist and a power sword already (although I’d probably make the powers word come right out of the wrist, like the Obliterator weapons).  More power swords aren’t hard to find, and if you check around in your Fantasy bits (or those of your friends) you’ll find even more blades you can use.  That’s especially true of axes to be used as power axes.  You can also take leftover chainswords from numerous sets to turn power fists into chainfists.

Helpful Hint – If you really want to add to the sense of bulk for Mutilators, use the chainsword-esque choppas from the Ork sets.  They’re plentiful, big, and brutal-looking, and their “blades” work either as chainaxes if you use them alone or chainfists if you add them to the existing power fist.

Now comes the tricky part.  Get some green stuff and use it on the model.  You want to cover some of the more mechanical joints (the shoulder, hips, waist).  You also want to use it to hide some of the rougher joins or icon removal you had to do.  Just use small bits of green stuff (half a pea at most) and take your time working it into joints and spreading it around.  It should also be used near the weapons.  It’ll help make the joins more solid and add to that look of twisted skin and muscle the Obliterators and Mutilators both use.

Helpful Hint – If you’ve ever wanted to try working with green stuff, but you’ve been a bit nervous, this is a perfect project to try it on.  Things like distorted muscle and flesh are very forgiving, because once they’re painted they tend to always look... well, distorted and mutilated.  You may remember when I made the Plague Tower and also the Plaguereaper, I used a similar, simple technique on the pus cannon for each of them.

You can also make simple tubes and cables just by rolling a small piece of green stuff into a snake and cutting off the pointed tips.  I did something similar making little tentacles for the base of my revamped Hive Tyrant.

And, having written all this out, I’m tempted to try it with one or two of my Black Reach terminators that never found a home...

Yet Another Dark Vengeance Update

Just wanted to share these real quick...

I’ve been holding off assembling the Hellbrute for two reasons.  One was that I wanted to actually read the codex first and see if there were any noteworthy changes or options I wanted to make as far as the model went.  Two is that I wanted to read the fluff behind it and see which of my Chaos armies it’d best fit into... which could also result in changes.

Overall, though, it struck me that the Hellbrute is just a renamed dreadnaught.  Which feels like a bit of a cheat, but hopefully it means Chaos is finally going to get a new dreadnaught model after just... oh, sixteen years or so.

Anyway, I decided to make two quick changes to the Dark Vengeance Hellbrute.  Like a lot of models in this set, it’s built into a very static pose and there’s not a lot of places to alter it.  One place you can, though, is the head at the center of the model.

I’d decided this particular Hellbrute was going to join my Thousand Sons army, so it seemed very out of character to have an exposed head.  I dug around and found one of the very old Chaos Warrior helmets from the Fantasy line (back when all those models were a bit more hunched and cartoonish).  Once the tall spike was cut off its top, it had a surprisingly solid resemblance to a Thousand Sons helmet.

The big trick, though?  I didn’t gouge out the Hellbrute’s face, I just flipped it around.  By turning that face plate front to back, it gave me a nice little cradle to set the helmet in. I also discovered if I rotated it 90 degrees the edges fit well against the inside shapes of the “sarcophagus.”

The other little tweak I made was the base.  I had a spare dreadnaught base—the one with all the rocky terrain and shell casings—and decided to see if the Hellbrute would fit on that.  Turns out he does once you snip off the support pegs.  The two low quadrants are pretty much level.

Helpful Hint – You’ll need to clip the inside corners of the scenery-slab under the Hellbrute’s left foot to make this work.  Not much, just maybe an eighth of an inch.  There’s also a shell casing or two that can be trimmed off the base to get a good fit.

Voila.  Cheap and easy conversion to make my Hellbrute stand out.

Here’s another one.  Some of you probably caught this already, but Chaos has a bonus HQ model hidden in the Dark Vengeance set.  Let’s take a look at that Chosen champion, Draznicht...

He’s dressed in pretty elaborate robes and capes.  He’s got a power mace.  His helmet is a stylized skull that’s grown some horns somewhere along the way.  The “vents” of his backpack look like a censer.

He’s a Dark Apostle.  You don’t even need to convert him.  He’d work absolutely fine as is.  However, if you wanted to make two simple tweaks...

I filed down the top of his backpack and gave him one of the chaos star icons from the basic Chaos Marine set.  Someone you know who plays Chaos has a pile of them, I guarantee it (assuming you don’t already).  I also gave him a little banner from one of the old Plague Monk sets (I think that’s what they’re called—it’s a fantasy Skaven thing).  This is a great little piece I grab whenever I find one, and I use it all the time as an additional frilly-prayer piece.  It looks great on Relictors, Grey Knights, and random Word Bearers.  And now on Dark Apostles, too.

And there you have it.  Dark Apostle Keven of the Alpha Legion, ready to lead his cultist army to...  Well, to their deaths, probably.  That’s what generally happens to cultists, after all.

And, yes, Keven is a subtle reference to The Cabin In The Woods. 

Dark Vengeance Update

Hey, just wanted to mention how this conversion attempt went off and show how I did it.

So, as I mentioned before, I think a lot of the figures in the Dark Vengeance set are really gorgeous.  However, their excessive detail and solid, closed-off poses make it very difficult for anyone except very experienced modelers to do a lot with them.

One exception to this is Veteran Sergeant Raphael  He’s got both arms out away from his torso.  He’s also one of the rare models in this set who has his head as a distinct piece.  Raphael comes with his right arm and head attached by a thin tube.  So I decided to see if I could turn him into a passable Fallen Angel sergeant/ aspiring champion.

I dry-assembled his torso without the head-arm piece and discovered Raphael has a standard head socket.  So all I needed to do was cut the head off right where it joins the tube and I’d be able to put on any head I wanted in any direction I wanted. 

I went with one of the retro-looking Chaos heads (I think it’s a modified Mk 5  helmet, but I’m sure opinions vary).  This worked in a couple different ways.  It’s “historically” correct for what a Fallen Angel would probably be wearing.  It’s a visual link to the studded greaves and powerfists of the terminators.  It also gives the implication of direct a tie to Chaos, or at least to the Heresy.

           

Helpful Hint— Most of you probably know this, but for the newer hobbyists, turning the head can completely change the dynamic of a model.  I turned this guy’s head away from the sword and toward the pistol.  Now he’s not gesturing, he looks more like he’s poised to leap into action.

The hand swap was another easy one.  One cut and I traded the modern plasma pistol for one of the retro Berserker ones.  The grip looks a bit odd on this pistol, but I’ve always loved all the tubing along the length of it.  While I had the berserker bits handy, I also added a holster on the figure’s hip.

As a last touch, I took my hobby knife to his chapter logo.  I made two thin gouges—trying to avoid the wings—and wedged them together.  One cut came from slightly above, one from slightly below.  I want the cut to be distinct, but if it looks a bit rough, that’s okay, too.  Now all my Fallen Angels wear a broken sword on their shoulder pad.

And there you have it—Aspiring Champion Beleth of the Fallen.

A Few Thoughts on Dark Vengeance...

I don’t usually do any straight reviews or comments on Games Workshop projects, but the starter set is such an insane bargain I thought it was worth a quick mention.  After all, being cheap is what this whole blog’s about...

On the Dark Angels side you’re getting two Headquarters units (figure they’re probably averaging $20 each), a tactical squad ($35), a Terminator squad ($50), and a bike squad ($35).  So with just this one side of the equation, this box set saves you about sixty bucks.  If you went for the deluxe set with the chaplain, that’s another $20 fig for just ten dollars more--$70 dollars off individual prices.

Coming at it from the Chaos angle, there’s a headquarters, we’ll call the Chosen another tactical squad (just for easy reference), the cultists (if they’re priced like Guardsmen, there’s $30) and the Hellbrute.  I’m going to go out on a limb and guess the Hellbrute would be a dreadnaught- or flier-sized kit with all the options, so there’s about $46.  Around one hundred thirty dollars altogether. 

So no matter which way you look at it, there’s a fair argument that you’re getting one army at 2/3 price and another one for free.  Plus the free rulebook.  And dice.  And templates.  Really, this is close to $350 dollars worth of stuff you’re getting for just under a hundred bucks.

That’s a pretty amazing deal.

However...

Many folks have commented that Dark Vengeance is an oddly unbalanced set.  A bunch of cultists vs. Space Marines and Terminators?  I’d point out that it’s also unbalanced towards Headquarters units.  If you bought the deluxe version, you’ve already got more Dark Angels HQ units than you can use in a regular game (barring some interesting Force Organization amendments in the upcoming Dark Angels codex).  Buying two sets isn’t going to help this problem.  You’ll just end up with a lot of models to sell on eBay.

Not to mention the fact that these are firmly Dark Angels models (or arguably a close successor chapter).  With all the iconography, there isn’t a lot of flexibility unless you want to do a ton of remodeling... probably enough that it won’t be worth the savings in the long run.  Dark Vengeance doesn’t just lock you into an army, it locks you into a very, very specific subset of that army.  It is to the overall gaming experience what the snap-together models are too customization.

UPDATE: The head and hand swap
were pretty easy on this model.
I'll put details in another post.

Speaking of which, these models are pretty solid.  There’s not going to be a lot of customization without a lot of serious work.  At best, you might get a few hand/weapon swaps.  I think it may be possible to do a head swap on Veteran Sergeant Raphael (we’ll find out for sure later this week).  If you have some accepting friends, you could paint all the Terminators silver, make their various “wings” gold, and call them Grey Knights, but you’d still need to figure out some close combat options...

In my own, they’re going to be added to my one squad of Fallen Angels that I made many years back (all metal models in robes).  With these models I’ve essentially got a small army of these black-armored heretics to use as an allied force for Chaos games.  And I know my friend Marcus—a long, long-time Dark Angels player--will appreciate getting to fight against an assembled host of the Fallen.

            

So, if you like Chaos and/ or Dark Angels, this set’s a fantastic bargain.  Just be aware there isn’t much else you can use it for.