Sekhmet Inceptor Ignis

Third time's the charm

Originally, I had thought to make Ignis either a Praevian or a Forge Lord.  To that end, I picked up the Iron Hands Forge Lord Terminator model and did some heavy conversion work on it.  I was about halfway through when Inferno arrived, and made it so the Thousand Sons could just take Castellax robots as a troop type, making an HQ that unlocked Cybernetica essentially pointless.  As being in Terminator armour was his next distinguishing mark, it became about which kind of armour he would appear in.  Before Inferno came out, I had toyed with the idea of making a Cataphracti Legion Terminator Squad and fluffing them as Order of Ruin, so using Ignis as the squad leader for this squad appealed, and I decided to use the plastic Praetor model.  Upon thinking about Sekhmet, however, it really became clear that prioritising a Sekhmet squad as my army's Terminators would be sensible, due to their combination of rules effectiveness, fluffyness, and the Scarab Occult 40K model kit.  Switching Ignis to the Tartaros squad appealed due to the more ornate and characterful model, and from there the thought process suddenly felt better.  While Ignis' cult power is never mentioned in the fluff, his name lends...credence...to the idea that he would be Pyrae, and so now I would have a squad of Tartaros Sekhmet pyrokines. 

It's always all about the cloaks

While deciding how to represent Ignis was a difficult process, once it became clear he had to be a Tartaros Sekhmet sergeant, actually putting him together was much easier.  As I mentioned in the previous post, the Scarab Occult have even more static poses than ordinary Tartaros, which isn't ideal for a character model.  In an attempt to add some movement to Ignis, I gave him the 30K limbs instead of the 40K ones, and tilted him on on a base with a slightly raised section.  Also, the most "firey" parts of the Rubric kit were put aside for him; it seemed fitting.

Ignis' distinguishing features in the fiction are his Terminator armament of boltgun and single lightning claw, and possessing orange and black armour amidst a bunch of guys who switch from red and white to blue and yellow.  I'm not sure what that's about, but he needed some orange and black on him somewhere.  Fortunately, as if this was all meticulously planned and not just a series of flashes of inspiration and fortunate coincidences, the Scarab Occult sergeant has a cloak with a flame pattern on it.  I thought about trying to paint it so it would be as pretty as I could, but then realised that my lower skill level would perhaps be best used making it look like a black leather rocker coat. So that had to be done.  There's obviously a lot of that kind of cheesy metal vibe to Warhammer, and the Thousand Sons are a prog rock kind of concept, so the skeevy orange and black glossy fire cloak makes me really happy.

As constantly mentioned, he and the rest of his squad are without highlights and transfers, but you can see where those things will be, and I can't wait to increase my game by attempting these.  I put transfers on the Rotor squad, and it was a kind of pain what with all the curved surfaces.  I need to get around ordering one of those glue and solvent sets and moving on with the transfers, but I guess that can wait until near the end of the project.  Who knows, perhaps by then my paints might be a bit thinner.  There's going to be a temptation to overdo the tiny text transfers on Ignis (and / or maybe use the geometric Word Bearers ones cut up a little instead), so I'll have to be careful in balancing out what is already a really busy model.