Army Project: Purgation Force Cadia - Planning

I bought a ticket to a Warhammer 40k 3rd edition event next year. Yes it was an impulse purchase. No I do not have an army. No I have not played 3rd edition before. What could go wrong?

In all seriousness, when I saw Isstvan Beach Club were putting on an event centred around the 3rd Edition Eye of Terror campaign supplement my brain must have short circuited, because I had bought the ticket two minutes later. I have loved 3rd edition ever since my mom's friend borrowed me his 3rd edition Rulebook(sorry I never returned it). To me it is peak Warhammer 40k. The event stipulates armies of 1250 points, so I sat down and put together a list; This post will be about that list, what I included and where I stand hobby wise. 

I have been collecting miniatures that are suitable for inquisitorial forces for years now, I literally have a big plastic tub with 'INQUISITION' on it filled to the brim with all kinds of kits. I also own both codices put out during 3rd edition 'Daemon Hunters' and 'Witchhunters'. So it was obvious which army I was going to play. Unlike Imperial Agents in 10th edition that army lists for the Inquisition in 3rd edition were a lot more flexible with customizable Inquisitors and retinues; This is in part due to the flexibility of Wargear and customizable characters for most of 40k's history. The flavour also came in the ability to ally in either Space Marines or Imperial Guard as well as a handful of Chapter Approved armies. I ended up choosing to use Witchhunters as the basis for my army, for no other reason than my Witchhunters book is shinier than the Daemon Hunters one.

The idea with this list was to abuse the hell out of the various supplement armies that cropped up in Chapter Approved and the Citadel Journal to make an army with as many disparate parts as possible to reflect the desperate nature of the force. To that end I have included 4 different units all from non-codex army lists, you will see them as they pop up.

HQ

I started out with an Inqusitor lord; I decided to theme the entire force around the Ciaphas Cain novels, since they are peak 3rd edition to me and work well with including Tau in it. So my Inquisitor will be Amberley Vail of Ordo Xenos. Her retinue will consist of one Acolyte, Zemelda Cleat who was a fast food vendor who got caught up in a Genestealer Cults cleansing action and promptly recruited by Vail. I will probably use an Escher juve to represent her. The Chirurgeon will be represented by tech priest Felicia Tayber(or well Magos by that point in time) as I could find no better way to include her. The Familiar will be just your average servo skull. The Penitent is her ever reliable and eccentric Psyker Rakel. The first Sage will be her Savant Caractacus Mott and the second the Tau diplomat El'Hassai who found himself respecting Caine for personally escorting him back to safety through a hostile city; This is where I will be using the 2001 LE Ethereal. Lastly are two Veteran Guardsmen; First of the bunch is Simeon a disgraced Commissar(I know he is dead, but I have a fitting model, so whatever); The second more importantly will be no other than Gunner Ferik Jürgen, Cain's blank sidekick. I have acquired a Valhallan with Melta just for this purpose. This rounds out Vail and her retinue and this is also where the first non-codex unit comes in; The Deathwatch Kill Team is from Chapter Approved 2003 and allows me to field up to ten of the black clad marines. I decided to stick with the minimum five, but promoted the captain to a librarian. I happen to have a not insignificant amount of the metal upgrades(shoulder pads, heads and bolters) so I can build them era appropriate. Fitting with the anti alien theme I made sure to make the squad as fiery as possible in terms of equipment. 

Troops

This is where things get wild. Right off the bat we have an Arbites Patrol Team from the Adeptus Arbites army list in Citadel Journal 29. I have a good 12 of the old 2nd edition Arbites and so these were an auto include; This is also where I had to ask for some feedback from the event organizers about their transport. In lore it is said that the Repressor is a riot suppression vehicle utilized by both the Sororitas and the Arbites, yet only the Sororitas can use it in game. In the end I settled on proxying a Rhino since it is built on that Chassis. I did not include it here, but I will have to add the bulldozer blades and extra armour upgrade to reflect the Repressor more closely. 

Next on our list is a squad that I had to do, Caine's Heroes. I decided to fill out one of the mandatory troops choices with a squad of Stormtroopers in rules, but use Valhallan models on the table. To add Caine in I attached a Witch Hunter priest as a proxy. I felt it was a fitting joke, since the priest makes the squad charge into melee whenever they can, reflecting Caine's bad luck of always ending up in the thick of it. Just like with the Chimera I might still have to add some wargear to reflect Caine's lucky nature like a Rosarius.

To fill out the other mandatory troops slot I just added more Stormtroopers, no funny shenanigans with those, they are just Stormtroopers. I am planning to either make a mixed unit of Kasrkin, the Inquisitorial Stormtroopers and the old 2nd edition Stormtroopers.

Last unit is the third instance of a non-Codex unit, this time it is an Elysian Drop troops unit and no not the ones from Forge World. In addition to the Armageddon global campaign, Chapter Approved 2003 gave us the Armageddon Imperial Guard regiments, debuting rules for some of the most popular regiments to this day: The Armageddon Ork Hunters, the Death Korps of Krieg, the Savlar Chem Dogs and the Elysian Drop Troops.

There were not just rules, but also a modelling guide for how to build these soldiers, so I decided to kitbash a whole unit just for this army. These guys play pretty similar to normal Stormtroopers, but instead of a dedicated transport they gain a special type of deep strike. Usually it divides your army into two waves, one that deep strikes in the firs turn, the other arriving as normal with a +1 bonus; Here this will just mean I get to deep strike this unit turn 1.

That rounds out my troops choices, I will have to build and paint quite a lot of miniatures for this army and it will not be easy.

Heavy Support

Last of the bizarre non-codex units is a hunting party of Kroot, courtesy of our dear comrade El'Hassai and the reason there will be no Sisters of Battle in my army. The Kroot Carnivore list was added in Chapter Approved 2003 as well and plays heavily into the adaptability aspect of the Kroot. It also allows you to ally 0-1 of every unit into any army that has all mandatory slots filled and is not Space Marines or Sisters of Battle; This was released before we got the Witchhunters and so I checked with the organizer yet again and got confirmation that I can use them if I do not field Sisters. The unit is the bare minimum and while they have the same BS3 all Kroot share, their weapons all have the Sniper keyword and thus are a nice unit to plink away at squads from afar. 

First Steps

Now that I have a somewhat coherent list I have to gather all the miniatures necessary. I originally wanted to assemble the army with just what I had, but I got a bit carried away so I had to buy some extra miniatures. I do not yet know how to best tackle assembling this army, so I will put the progress for each section here to give you an idea where I am at.

Vail and her retinue

First I had to put together a rough plan for how to design Vail and her retinue, so here is a crude graphic:

Of all these miniatures I was originally missing the Valhallan with Melta and the Callidus. I have since managed to get the Valhallan for a fair price from a great chap over on Instagram. I will have to see where I get the Callidus from.

Deathwatch Kill Team

On this front I have all the miniatures I need, I just need to gather the pieces and assemble them. I might try and buy some molded chapter shoulder pads to add extra flavor, but that is just for vanity and not strictly necessary.

Caine's Heroes

I managed to get a Caine proxy by Brother Vinni which I slightly modified(heated up the neck and made the pose straighter and replaced the knock off bolter with a laspistol) to fit in. The Valhallans and Chimera I already owned, inlcuding a cheeky Valhallan tank rider to add to the Chimera. I have spent a day or so assembling the Chimera and primed one of the Valhallans to put together a test scheme for the 597th regiment using the book cover of Vainglorious as reference.

There were two different references for the 597th uniform color, I ended up going for the Khaki one since it looked cooler.

Stormtroopers

I still need to decide whether to make this a unit of all kinds of Stormtroopers or commit to one. I did already assemble their Chimera with the old Forge World door and sigil.

Elysian Drop Troops

The article in Chapter Approved showed how to kitbash these guys from Scouts with a headswap. I own enough scouts to pull it off, but i need to figure out a way to recast the heads from the Imperial Guard Tank Crew so I have multiple of them to give to the scouts. I tried using blue stuff, but the molds came out middling at best, so more testing is required.

Arbites Patrol

As stated previously I own plenty of the old Arbites, so no need to get more miniatures. I also painted one of them with a bolter earlier this year, so the paint scheme is already determined. What I do need to get ahold of is a Suppressor upgrade kit and seeing how rare and expensive these are, might have to find an alternative.

Kroot Hunter Kindred

I did not own any Kroot before this, so I went to the local second hand online store and picked up five pre-built Kroot and since the rules state you need one as the unit leader I also bought a Shaper. I ended up paying around 30 quid for the whole squads which is an alright price. Only issue is that two of the Kroot have one arm each replaced by a Tau one which I will need to replace. Oh and if you are wondering why there are two metal Tau, well they were cheap and I just really wanted to pick up some. 

The End?

This is the rough outline for my army as it stands now. I might switch around some gear and if possible add at least one vehicle, but I think this is pretty much what I want. I will try and post semi-regular updates on this project as it takes shape. I am really looking forward to this!

Chaos Mutilators Land On The Hobby Desk

This Tuesday I celebrated my 24th birthday; Since my mom is not a fan of ordering things online and most things I tend to wish for are acquired online I got a handful of money to treat myself. And treat myself I did, after the traditional birthday family dinner(we had vietnamese) I hopped on a second hand tabletop store online and filled my cart with things. What things you may ask? Oh there was a choice selection of Age Of Sigmar books from first edition and the miniatures featured in today's post: The Chaos Marine Mutilators!

I always had half an eye on these guys, I remember they were released alongside the Heldrake, Forgefiend and the first plastic Warptalons back in 2013; Fast forward to 2017 when I returned to the hobby and I saw them again, this time on the local GW's 'going out of store soon' shelf next to some resin plague marines(still so mad I did not pick them up). I always wanted them but got sidetracked by other kits, now with the first plastic Mutilators on the horizon I find myself returning to these guys. Do not get me wrong, I am not one to hate on when GW overhauls designs with new minis, but the new Mutilators are just such a downgrade in my opinion.

Unlike the new obliterators, they just look so intentionally engineered, the older designs looked so messed up and warped, flesh stretching over their weapons, nothing looked like it should belong. Anyways, now that I have vented my frustration with the new models you might understand why I wanted some of the old ones and finally pushed myself to buy them. They arrived surprisingly fast only a day later and here they were:

I bought them used for about as much as they cost back in the day and they were in pretty good shape, the store even had the sense to stick a package puff on each claw and horn! I spent about an hour disassembling and cleaning them, removing the little triangles of hell, which were surprisingly rare. I know these guys were never released in metal, but their bodies were, so to see metal models adapted to Finecast not suffer from the horrendously bad casting and triangles of doom was quite the joy. 

Since my Chaos Marines are part of my Ordos & Heretics collection I had to make some Cobblestone bases for these guys to sit on, as always its an hour long process with lots of swearing and mismeasuring the amount of Miliput I need; As you can see I ended up with enough Miliput for two 32mm and two 25mm bases, so I guess I can skip this step for the next four minis I do for this collection.

After the bases were prepped and drying I began the long task of pinning the mutilators, the heads had a fixed position, so I added a pin to reinforce the bond, I also had to clean under their chins for them to fit flush into their terminator torsos. The arms took the longest time as I hummed and hawed over the position, I originally intended to follow the poses on the studio models, since that seemed like the easiest way to get decent looking poses out of these guys; Not to say that they were great poses as the arms still conflicted with their legs and knees. I ended up settling for some more dynamic poses working arm by arm.

The first guy was done by the book so to speak, but with slightly wider stance as I felt he deserved to be a bit more open, the left arm on this guy came in two pieces(shoulderpad and arm) which allowed for a slight posability, I pinned the arm and shoulder to each other first to have a bit of free range motion to see what fits. The other arm was bog standard as seen in the studio photos. Truth be told this is the least interesting model out of the unit since he has the least interesting arms and there are two copies of his body and head in the unit.

The next guy was the most fun to pose, he has a mid walk body which already makes him more dynamic than the others too. I followed the studio miniatures again roughly for pose references, but I decided to modify his right arm, it is the same one as seen on the first guy, but I wanted this guy to have a more sweeping motion like he is prowling for prey, his arm outstretched. I ended up slightly overextending the arm, sculpting a bit to transition the overhang into the shoulder pad. I think this guy turned out great in terms of pose, but after spray priming I realised he would have actually profited from a bit of paint stripping, since his face got a more concentrated blast of spray primer, but oh well, nothing a bit of detail painting cannot fix, right?

The last guy took the longest for me to figure out to be honest, given how very static his arms looked I figured I could add some dynamism by giving him a mid swing pose. The next fifteen minutes were spent figuring out how to do that with the limited posability; The first decision was to use some hot water and curl his fingers to make him look more agitated and less relaxed. I know hot water or air is great for dealing with warped resin, but I implore you to try and slightly adjust poses and give minis a whole new look in some cases. 

Anyways back to the Mutilator, with the first arm settled I was unsure what to do with the other arm; I originally thought I could give him a Hulk-like pose with both arms lifted up to strike. In the end I settled for a counter balancing pose. I think this worked in favor of the whole pose as it gives the pose the slight sidewards angle it needs to sell the striking pose.

Anyways that is all three Mutilators refurbished and assembled, sadly I noticed I was missing two spike bitz and decided to miliput over the gaps. A quick two tone zentihal and they are ready for some paint!

I am really looking forward to painting these guys; Thank you for taking the time and reading up on my progress, have a great night, day whichever applies!