WIP - Lotus Fighter

Let it rain

While all my photographs are technically Work In Progress, everything I've posted so far has been tabletop ready. I'm working up to trying paint techniques I consider 'big boy' stuff (and everyone else probably thinks of as easy).  However, I've been working on this thing all week and, as it's now approaching assembly, thought I'd document an earlier stage than I have typically been showing.

In A Thousand Sons, Graham McNeil briefly (like, in one line) mentions "Lotus fighters" and "Apis bombers" are supporting a Thousand Sons campaign on a world where airpower is required.  While they aren't explicitly said to be Legion craft, the names imply - at least to me - that they were Prosperine in nature.  I noted them down as Legion craft in the back of my head at the time and moved on.

Later, the Thousand Sons are mentioned as having two patterns of Stormbird unique to their legion, the Khonsu and the Apophis (the latter being so big it was nicknamed 'Sunkiller' because it blotted out the sun), and so I took this unusual emphasis on unique craft as an indicator that the Legion had an airwing of either some size, or one of specialised nature.

Eventually, in Inferno, it is indeed stated that the Thousand Sons have a cadre of skilled pilots, who take to the skies to defend Tizca...in Xiphons.  Well, gotta mention the Forgeworld toys, I guess.

I had been toying with the idea of getting a Xiphon or a Lightning, as both models look amazing.  However, as my force is heavy on both custom looks and drawing from Black Library fluff, I settled on the idea of making a Lotus, and eventually an Apis as well.  This is my attempt at the fighter, and as you can see, it's basically a Stormtalon with Necron Scythe wings on backwards.  People I've showed it too aren't super-keen, but I'm digging it and I guess that's what matters.

It's sporting lascannons in the nose, and I'm going to say the ports in the wings contain missiles, so I guess I can use it as a 'counts-as' Xiphon or Lightning if opponents let me?  We'll see how that goes, I guess.

I have the larger engine variants from the Stormtalon built, painted and ready to stick onto the sides, and I tentatively hit it with an attempt at edge highlights and scuffing similar to the Rhino.  I'm going to work on it while alternating with an Ammitara squad, so it might be a few entries before it turns up again.

Remembrancer Camille Shivani

Something a bit different

I was in need of a short break from power armour.  I could've ordered that Eddy I want, or a Land Raider, or even a Thudd Gun Rapier or something, but I still wanted to add another person to my collection.  It's the characters I care about, after all.

Every now and then I consider that I'd like to add some Prosperine Spireguard to my force, once all the marines are done.  I've looked through a lot of options for human miniatures, and most are unsatisfying to be perfectly honest.  In comparison to the astartes, anyway.  I still want to get some in there somehow, as militia or something perhaps.

While doing this, I did note that many of the Infinity game system models were quite cool, and it was while browsing through their catalogue I had my next idea.  I was going to make the remembrancers.

In A Thousand Sons by Graham McNeil, the main characters roll around with three remembrancers hanging off their coat-tails. Pretty decent characters all, one of them even becomes Ahriman's apprentice.  Ahriman's developed a kind of teacher vibe in many of his modern appearances, which suits him.  It gives him a little something else, with his arrogance and personality flaws eventually ruining the teacher-student relationship he seems to prize having, in both A Thousand Sons and John French's Ahriman series.

The XVth in general have a vaguely parental, encouraging attitude to humans that, while of course inflected with arrogance and superiority, is something I like as a concept.  Many of the marine legions, while ostensibly defenders of humanity, can barely tolerate the presence of ordinary mortals.  McNeil's Thousand Sons, however, can be found sitting chatting with humans about archaeology, wine or a good book.  Further, and made explicitly clear in Inferno, the Legionaries cared about the lives of the civilian inhabitants of Tizca, and made just as much effort to protect and save them as they did anything else.

I picked up three Infinity models to use as Gaumon, Shivani and Eris.  I initially thought to paint them as first described in the book, but realised they would stand out and clash with the Legion colour scheme, Gaumon especially.  So Legion colours it would be.  Camille Shivani is a psychometric archaeologist, practical, can handle herself in a dangerous situation, and is one of the first gay characters I can think of in the setting.  I had gotten Shivani up to the basecoat and first layer you see in these pictures when Crimson King came out, and wouldn't you know it, the Remembrancers return for that novel.  Nothing I read about their fates put me off on working on them, but I think having them fresh in my mind made thinking about them more kind of unappealing, so this is where I stopped on the project.  To be continued.

In game terms, they will be used as Objective markers for my army to secure and protect.

Librarian Consul Ctesias

Who?

With a squad and a minor character under my belt, it was time to chance my arm at something a little more important.  I decided to make a Heresy-era version of Ctesias, the Summoner.

I love this guy.  A creation of John French, he appears in the Ahriman series, narrating a half dozen short stories and acting as a main viewpoint character.  He's got a bit of a mysterious background as neither Prosperine nor Terran, and Ctesias isn't even his birth-name.  Hell, I'm not even sure he was rolling with the Thousand Sons during the Great Crusade.  Despite perhaps not technically existing during the era of the game, I'm including him in my force anyway, because he's great.  The level of uncertainty around him also tickles me, because the historical Ctesias (an ancient Persian historian) is considered a grade-A liar.

The Build

The beneficiary of a flashback scene when he's in crimson armour, Ctesias' distinguishing feature is a black cloak and robe, lined with white and gold markings.  As will become clear with most of my models, I've stopped before getting to the point of applying transfers, highlights and fine detailing, so he doesn't have any of that past the black part.  He will one day, though.

I didn't own any models with cloaks, of course.  So one trip to the Warhammer store later, I could now add a Dark Angels veteran squad box to my rapidly growing collection of sprues...which by now also included the newly released 40K Rubric marine and Scarab Occult kits, as well as a bunch of Forgeworld upgrade options.
Originally intending to use one of the full cloak affairs, complete with hood, I quickly realised this wouldn't look that 'Thousand Son-y'.  The knife came out, and the striding forward body got halved, the legs being attached to a Legion upgrade torso.  Ctesias is physically frail (for a Space Marine) and uses a staff, so one from the Rubric kit was added, with the Chaos stuff replaced with a blade from the Scarab Occult box.  I was going to use some eagle wings from the Dark Angel box to make an axe at first, but settled on the more obvious Thousand Son route after some thinking.  In A Thousand Sons, Ahriman's khopesh has an extendable haft, allowing it to attach to a staff and become a polearm, so I used the same idea here.  With that modelling and background, this means I can kind of get away with 'counts-as-ing' the staff as pretty much any kind of power or force weapon, though I'd never actually claim it as a sword.

For his other arm, I really wanted him to be holding a book or a scroll (something he was poring over in his one flashback scene), so a standard Rubric bolter arm seemed to work, the open hand being prime to hold something.  I made a scroll out of some paper and it actually looked good, so it sat in his hand for months.  However, I eventually fell victim to wanting him to look both cooler and a little eviler, and came up with adding a translucent plastic 'magic flame' effect.  I got quite hung up on this idea and hunted through all my stuff to try and find something.  Unable to locate what I wanted, I eventually gave in and carved something out of a bigger lump.  Painting it was trial and error, but the finished result is good enough for now.

As for the head, I struggled over that for a while.  For a Thousand Sons obsessive, I'm not that into the giant headcrests.  I keep thinking of them banging their heads on doors.  However, as a character I wanted to stand out and look cool, with a big tall spear, it became clear Ctesias had to have one.  Fortunately, I managed to get my hands on one that I think looks fitting for a 30K force, over the more sorcerously styled Rubric ones.  I want to add more to him, but not too much.  Maybe that scroll, or a book, can hang from his belt.  Perhaps I can get one of those sorcerer cloaks and attach it to his back.

 Painting

As to painting...well, when I was planning my army, I wanted all my guys to have silver trim.  The books all say they're silver, early pictures show various shades of ivory and white...and then the brand new interpretations say they're gold-trimmed.  I struggled with this for a while, before deciding I'd make Veterans and officers have the white trim.  I also decided I'd also go for a shiny look on the white, so grabbed some pearlescent paint.  So when it came to Ctesias, I was all ready to give him white trim.  But, looking through my shoulder pad box for something cool, I settled on the idea that I could use a lot of the typical winged icons in my force, but instead of painting them as black raven feathers, I'd make them the additional white element.  There are several white-feathered birds in Egyptian natural history, including the sacred Ibis.  That seemed fitting.

The Crunch

I made Ctesias with no idea what I was going to use him for.  A squint into the rulebook, and it seemed natural just to make him a Librarian.  Inferno hadn't come out by the time I finished him, so if I wanted psychic powers, that was the way to go.

After Inferno landed, I wasn't sure that a Librarian was still the best use of him, considering you can throw powers and a force weapon at any old Consul now.  However, I didn't see making Ctesias anything else to be especially fluffy.  He doesn't really do anything else except truck with daemons. Ahriman uses him as a kind of herald or delegate at one point, but Ctesias seems to dislike most of his brothers, so I didn't go down that route.  Librarian it would be.  Granting him the correct Cult Arcana and powers, however, is a lot more difficult, and I still think about it.  I just contacted John French to ask his opinion, so hopefully he'll have the answer.

Ctesias in the series is a binder and summoner of daemons.  At first, my thinking went along the lines of "Well, he'd have to be telepathic to do that, so let's make him Athanean".  The idea of jumping out of a Rhino and firing off a Psychic Shriek does appeal, rather.
While him being Athanean is okay, overall, using those powers didn't sit well with me in terms of his fluff, and so in the end - as fluff conquers all - I've decided there really is no other way to run Ctesias than with Sanctic Daemonology.  I know this is nerfing myself, but it just feels right.  I only really foresee getting one power off with Ctesias a game (after the aforesaid jumping-out-of-a-Rhino), so with Arcane Litanies attached to his belt, he should hopefully manage to do it and not damn himself in the process.

Legion Tactical Support Squad Sobek

A Rotor Squad?

Well, I needed to do something with all those mark III plastics from the Prospero box.  But I didn't want to do a big squad in case I messed it up, and I wasn't sure if I should be making a Tactical Squad or a Veteran Squad. I put together several bolter guys and tentatively tried painting them, learning more of what not to do than actually how to go about getting what I wanted.  I decided to start again, and to start with a planned, legal squad, instead of just attacking some bolter guys in the assumed idea that I'd need them.
Reading the Age of Darkness army list to see what legal squads even were in the Horus Heresy game, I realised to my great delight that I could make a Rotor Squad.  Looking around the internet to see what was thought of them, I discovered Rotor Squads were largely considered terrible.  This didn't put me off in the slightest.  I thought it was hilarious that they even existed.

Reapers

 

There's this bit in A Thousand Sons were Ahriman looks around at his men, and sees a squad spooling up their newly issued rotary assault cannons.  Now, from reading the text, it appears that McNeill was trying to suggest that the Thousand Sons had just gotten their hands on actual assault cannons, replacing an old and crap model called the Reaper cannon.  To me, this read as if the Legion had recently ditched their Reaper autocannons (a typical Chaos marine weapon in 40K) for assault cannons (a weapon Chaos marines aren't typically allowed, for...reasons).  Kind of cool.  Perhaps to get around the idea that 'chaos marines' (as the Thousand Sons would become) didn't have assault cannons, Ahriman notes that they all still call them Reaper cannons because they like the numerology of the name.  That's gonna confuse your quartermaster serfs, but whatever.

Now I don't know if this passage had an influence on Forgeworld, but I did know that, before I even found out such a thing existed, I wanted at least one squad to somehow be lugging around old-looking rotary cannons, and wondered if I could dig up some old or third party assault cannons to counts-as autocannons.  So you can imagine my delight when I found that Forgeworld not only made some actual rotor cannons, but there were rules for them that said they were old and crap.  There were two patterns, and I decided on the one that came with cool backpacks. The set gives you enough parts to make 5 rotor-neers, but I ended up just doing 4, as I wanted the squad sergeant to not actually be carrying one...

Sobek

As my goal was to have as many fluff characters in my army as possible, this meant working out not only who I wanted, but how I'd get them in there.  One of Graham's I wanted in was Sobek.  The kind of dour, snobby Practicus to Ahriman, he had to be rolling with his boss.

As buying my paints had to be organised, I took to flicking through the Visions of Heresy artbook to see how the Thousand Sons colour scheme was being presented that week (more on that in another post), and I discovered a picture of him!  Leading a Heavy Support Squad.  Well, too bad, Sobek, you're a tac support squad Sergeant now.

Shiny marines

I think the modelling came out okay.  The painting, not so much.  I've always been a shiny Thousand Sons guy, and so trying to work that out without an airbrush was an early step.  Originally I went with a silver undercoat, and thought it looked okay.  However, after much staring, I decided it was too dark.  It made me think Word Bearers instead of Thousand Sons, which I felt were a warmer red.
Rather than strip Sobek (I hadn't discovered how to do that yet), I just re-basecoated him and tried again with a gold undercoat.  He's therefore quite THICK.  And I may as well mention it here: I haven't learned how to properly edge highlight yet.  I've started on a few later models, with the intention of going back and adding highlights to my first ones, like good old Sobek and pals here.  I did at least drill the barrel of his pistol, a simple and great idea I read about online that I'm sure everyone else already knows to do.

The rest of the squad started from the gold, so are warmer and look pretty much how I want them to in terms of red.  You can also see that I ordered some upgrade kits from Forgeworld, as Sobek is sporting the upgrade shoulder pads.  Along with the shiny style, I was long a believer that Thousand Sons were red and white (or silver, as some sources say), and didn't at first like the newer studio vision of them being red and gold.  However, I decided to paint this squad with gold edging as it did look cool, and I figured I would rationalise it by saying that gold trim was for line troops, with silver restricted to officers or veteran troops.  Inferno would later legitimise this decision.

You can also note the absolute pain in the arse trying to photograph shiny miniatures is thanks to this guy, especially with a ghetto cardboard box set up like mine.  The red doesn't come out as deep and rich as it is in person, and of course, it has natural highlights that move around as you move the miniature.

Update: a legal miniature?

It was recently brought to my attention that the Sobek model may not actually be legal.  Someone pointed out that, following the wording of the loadout rules, a Tactical Support Squad Sergeant is noted as being able to swap out his flamer (his default weapon) for a close combat weapon.  It doesn't mention being able to swap out any of his other options.  Additionally, the unit entry says that if the squad swaps out their flamers (again, the default), all models in the squad must have the same weapon.  So, the gentlemen said, the sergeant must also have a rotor cannon.

Of course, some other people then said that this was a too strict reading of the rules and it would be implied that the sergeant could swap out whatever weapon for a close combat weapon, following up with some anecdotal evidence that this was allowed in a Warhammer World tournament.  Now, I think giving up dakka for a sword the unit will probably never get much use out of is actually nerfing myself instead of gaining advantage, but I'm not an active gamer.  What I will say is that the point of making this model was to make it look like Sobek, and that's what he looks like.  As said, I have the parts to make another rotor cannon gunner, so if I ever enter a tournament and someone complains, I guess I'll just swap him out.

Old and Crap? More like Over and Powered

I'd actually finished these guys before Inferno came out and made everyone who isn't a witch-sympathiser hate the Thousand Sons even more.  So it was with some happiness that I read the Legion options that allow Thousand Sons Rotor squads to gain the Shred rule.  Combine them with Corvidae cult arcana, and they gain some good re-rolls.  Handy that my guys were already fluffed to be Corvidae thanks to Sobek, and my army being planned to be Corvidae heavy thanks to Ahriman.  However, adding all those options to even just five guys does cost points, and anecdotes from the internet (obviously always trustworthy) seem to indicate that even Thousand Sons rotor squads do crap all in the grand scheme of things.

Hope, snatched away by reality.  Rotor squads in the XVth Legion are fluffy as all heck.