Building Better Worlds

"There was no wall left unbroken, no building that had not been fought over a dozen times [...] won, lost then won again, until men were fighting over the wreckage of a hundred previous defeats. By the end, it was a war fought in the carcass of a city by men tired exhausted and horrified beyond the telling of it. The waking dead fighting over the corpse of a giant."

I bought the Kill Team box set; not only because it was the game that the school club was most interested in but also because I love some decent scenery and I'm always looking to expand Hive Karhonnen. 

And the new scenery is really rather lovely. 

The basecoat was applied with an airbrush - as with previous stuff I decided on the Lynch Harkonnen colour scheme. So blue grey on the outside and sickly green for the interiors. 

The exterior was drybrushed with grey and the interiors washed with heavily watered smokey ink. 

Interior before wash:

After Wash:

As you can see, they have a massive scale and add a real cinematic feel to the tabletop:

And here's some detail shots:

The box set comes with the playing mat allowing some really interesting set ups. 

This is a pretty good deal I think - two complete squads, the rule book and all this scenery for £60 is not to be sniffed at. 

And finally:

"Ah, Control, this is Fire Team Alpha. We've reached the unidentified object as ordered and... well..."

The Church of the Devoured

Since the day you were born, your lives have not been your own. You have been used, and abused, and cast down amongst the filth by those above. You are not a person. You are a cog in the machine. You are production output. You are a target. You are nothing. Your hopes. Your dreams. Your lives. They are as dust. Worse: you are food. Meat to be consumed by the machinery of this Empire of Man.  Our lives are eaten by the factories. Our sons and daughters are eaten by the conscription tithes. Even our dead are fed back to us. 

But it does not have to be that way. You can rise up, on the teeth of angels; rise up, born aloft by the love of the Allfather, the True Emperor, the Devourer of Mankind. The God King who cares for you, who will cherish you and who will empower you. And when there are enough of us, we shall rise from the ashes and dirt and rust and bring hungry vengeance upon those who have despised us. The devoured shall become the devourers! Rise up, my brothers! Rise up, my sisters! Let your old lives end and be born anew into glory!

-Pater Dol, preaching in the Underhive

Several of these you will recognise as the core of my Necromunda gang, built as stock Genestealer Cultists. For Kill Team I added a couple of Space Hulk Genestealers and some more cultists built from the Cawdor gang and cultist bits:

To get the best of the Cawdor kit - which has some great bits in it - you have to be willing to be brutal and start using the saw and knife quite forcefully. 

If I knock together a couple of infiltrators that now means I have two complete Kill Team Rosters. 

Myself and the eldest spent the afternoon building - me some Hobbit Goblins and he a cheap little Revel Star Wars kit I had kicking around for him.

The Last Child of Ungoliant

"Even as Frodo spoke he felt a great malice bent upon him, and a deadly regard considering him. [...] The radiance of the star-glass was broken and thrown back from their thousand facets, but behind the glitter a pale deadly fire began steadily to glow within, a flame kindled in some deep pit of evil thought. Monstruous and abominable eyes they were, bestial and yet filled with purpose and with hideous delight, gloating over their prey trapped beyond all hope of escape."

Two years ago I scored a Shelob from eBay at a reduced prive because she was broken. Missing one mandible and with two back legs broken she became another of my recscue jobs. And finally, here she is!

I had to resculpt one of the back legs from greenstuff over a wire frame, as I did with the front mandible. 

Several of the legs needed drilling and pinning. 

Overall, I am pleased with how she turned out. I am interested to see how she works in the new edition of the game, as such an iconic beast should pack quite a punch.

In other news, I have decided to have a go at Armies on Parade this year; my entry will be a Lord of the Rings army led my the Witch King of Angmar so Shelob may well find her way into that...

KILL TEAM GAL-1-L30

Obviously I've got interested in Kill Team; so far it seems like a good successor to Shadow Wars and is something the School Club will be going for. So I wanted to add some ranged support to the Mechanicus troops I already had. 

The last one was a simple idea that turned out to be really complicated. I prefer snipers to look like they're sniping and so I wanted one to be laid on the ground. This turned into a really complicated job, requiring me to resculpt the coat so it laid on the ground, create a base to support the legs and coat and more or less construct both arms from scratch. 

I think the results were worth it, though. 

Up next another Lord of the Rings Rescue Job and the start of a major project...