Sentinel Conversions for the Genestealer Cult

While I work on the bulk of the infantry, which are getting close to done now, I thought I'd show the Sentinels.

All of the vehicles will have 'tyranid infestation' but for the sentinels I had an idea for something a bit different.
Most builds for the sentinel are open-topped, where you can see the driver. Rather than put one of the mildly mutating infantry in there, or closing it up and treating it like the other vehicles, I thought of this fellow:

Not that I'd put an actual hermit crab in the sentinel, but not all tyranid creatures are tough as nails.  

I imagined a smart but soft species that would use shells, perhaps from dead carnifeges for protection.  

But in the case of overwriting human dna in the manifestation of a Genestealer Cult, this breed of tyranid has a lot more options.. and some of those options have guns!

So here's my brain & tentacle creatures piloting their fancy new shells...

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This one (stompy) is in the act of walking forward.  I usually see sentinels with both feet firmly planted to the base but I don't know why.  The legs can be posed, the head-hull can be rotated a bit... can get some feeling of movement from the model. It is supposed to be a scout after all. 

This one (runny) is in more of a full-tilt headlong run, but turning his head a bit to the right to take a shot. 

One of my favorite machines from Star Wars is the AT-ST, and how menacing they looked stalking the forest of Endor, so I've tried to bring some of that to these.  

The bases are painted already, they'll be combined after the vehicles are painted too. 

Genestealer Cult Priests: painted

The Psycker Overseers are finished.
I'm really enjoying painting the short transitions from light to near-black for the chitinous armored alien-crab-bug legs. I may end up needing to paint a tyranid army for myself someday!

For this guy his face paint I drew inspiration from Magua, from Last of the Mohicans. With that tube in his mouth it wouldn't have worked for the face paint to cover the lower half of his mouth so i went for a band across the eye. Like Magua, this guy has supreme confidence, and a sociopathic disconnect that can't even conceive that the sufferings of others has any relevance. You can just see it in the pose. That, and the fact that he's used someone else's head as a psychic canteen on some sort.

More to come.. I've got a bit over two weeks to do the remaining 45 infantry and 10 vehicles. 

So I feel a bit like the fellow above ;) 

Speaking of Magua:

Enjoy the best chase & battle scene from any movie & my favorite movie: Last of the Mohicans.

Genestealer Cult Priests: conversions.

Some small conversions to make a couple Genestealer Cult unit leaders that I'm pretty happy with.
The 2 units of psykers, which are represented by yesterday's aliens, also need to have an 'Overseer': someone to keep the psykers in line, and focus their mental energy.  If the mutants that are the psykers are full-blown dna overwritten aliens, then the Overseers would be less physically mutated- a bridge between the alien & human elements of the army.  For this, I used the Renegade Rogue Psykers from Forgeworld.

Here is how the conversions turned out:

This guy just exudes confidence. And this particular base was just right for his pose, like he's stepping out onto a ledge to preach/mind control the masses. I liked the original's banner poles, but obviously he needed something more alien, so I gave him an additional set of limbs, scythed of course.

This is the original. the other fellow doesn't seem to be handling his powers as well as his co-worker. In fact, he looks like his head is about to explode.  In truth, I don't like this model nearly as much as the other, so I figured he'd need some extra converting to make him as interesting. 

So why does his head hurt so much? Yes, because of all the psychic energy, but also because he's struggling to keep his own mutation in check. His head is elongating and mutating.. 'bugging out'! hehe (sorry). I had an old scene from 'Wolfen' in mind here.  He's also got an extra set of limbs, but more fitting his less-confident nature, I went with ones that look like they're usually hidden under his clothes, more stunted... I had a scene of the mutant that reveals an extra arm on Mars in 'Total Recall' for that. 

I've already started painting them, they should be done soon. 

Won't be long before the Cult reigns over their planet...

enjoy the appropriate-by-pun music:

The Alien Menace: 2 units painted.

February is going to be Genetsealer Cult time around here- I'm going to be on triple time to finish this project by deadline. Won't be much of any time for my own projects, they're all on hold, but I don't want to leave the blog unattended either. Here are the aliens from the last update, now finished.

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This is two squads of Cult psychers, along with the command squad astropath.  The pycher squads each have a missing member, their leaders, which I finished converting last night- I'll show a picture of them tomorrow.

I'm pretty happy with the limited pallet. Only a few colors, but transitioning through them I feel makes for an interesting look. 

Not the girl you want to bring home to mother.  

Unless you don't like your mother, and you'd like to see her get eaten.

Stories to Paint By: Pandora's Star & Judas Unchained

I paint a lot.  And convert a lot. I often spend near half the day in the studio.  I listen to a lot of podcasts, but I like *stories*.  I've been an avid reader since early teens when I was hit by a car (won't take long laying in a hospital bed before you will try anything to get your mind somewhere else) and of course I like movies.  So that, and the fact that I tend to be too busy to find any time to read, lead me to listen to audio books while working in the studio, and it makes the time that much more enjoyable.

My most recent big project, the Genestealer Cult army, finished off a series I have been listening to: Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained by Peter F. Hamilton.

   

Audible has the books unabridged (I don't like abridged versions, besides, I have plenty of listening time available for the complete versions).  It is a sci-fi series, set a few hundred years into our future.  On the day humans first set foot on Mars, the astronauts are beaten to the punch by a couple young geniuses who figured out how to generate wormholes.  From there, humans are soon exploring the galaxy, and settling planets further & further out into space.

The story is engaging because it is really several stories entwined into one: a detective story, a story of guerrilla war against an unknown alien threat, a tale of ancient discoveries, and eventually, one of an intergalactic war.  The few alien species are properly very alien.  As a gamer, it made me think of several fun concepts for tabletop battles both terrestrial and spaceship combats. I also enjoyed my own side-thoughts about issues it brings up, such as what is selfhood, what is the nature of our species, and what happens when evolution stumbles into creating a species that is dangerous to all other life forms.  Plenty of good entertainment in these books on many levels.

If you like sci-fi, in the tradition of Asimov, Clark & Heinlein, which I think these would fall into, then give it a read or listen, whatever your preference and time allows for.

I give the story 4.5 Paint Bottles out of 5: well worth the time and very enjoyable painting time!

Not the same aliens as this series, but insidious in their own right, here's a w.i.p. shot of a bunch of aliens for the current project:

Chaos Dwarf Blood Bowl: another team for 2012

I had said I'd done two Blood Bowl Chaos Dwarf teams in January, this is the 2nd one.
This is a good example of what I like about Blood Bowl and other 'skirmish size' projects: it's a nice sized project to explore an idea or theme, and you can get very different feeling projects, even with the same 'list' or 'army'.  A score or so of models is a great size to scratch an itch for a theme or style you want, without having to invest in a large army (although that can be very rewarding in it's own way too). Because of this, it's not unreasonable to have 2 of the same team or army, but have different themes.  For example, there are 2 different themes I want to use for making Ogre Blood Bowl teams, that I might get around to sometime this year...

But for now, on to the 2nd Chaos Dwarf team I've done this year.

This one uses Gaspez-Arts chaos dwarves, which are very different than the Greebo ones from the last team: they have almost no armor, looking more like barbarian dwarves. He didn't like their hobgoblins, but wanted something that would fit in with the dwarves: little clothing present and looking savage: I suggested the feral Uruk-hai.  Since the scale for Lord of the Rings minis is smaller than the typical 'heroic' scale minis, I figured they'd work fine as tall 'hobgoblins' at this scale, instead of the hulking uruks they're intended to be. The Minotaur is from Reaper.

I suggested the skin being used to carry any color: reds & ochre, and the uniform being black & ivory, for an ancient Greek feel.  Here's how they turned out:

The dwarves: I went for a 'Barsoomian Red Man' skin tone. 

The Hobgoblins: lighter skin tone, to show them as a bit 'weedier' than the dwarves. 

Order of the Stick has influenced me: Hobgoblins are Yellow to my mind now ;) 

see 'Vulcan's Hammers in the Hall of Fame for more yellow hobgoblins.

Centaurs.  

Minotaur.  A good Blood Bowl pose. 

The Coach.  Converted from one of the players: removed his fist-spike and sculpted a coach's cap. 

Here's the team, now placed in the Fall of Fame page to visit with all the other Blood Bowl teams. 

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Aslan's Asskickers: Game 3 Report

 Jim: "It looks like the lion-loving team is back for another game.

Bob: "That's good Jim! They killed and hurt so many last game, which is what this game is all about."

Jim: "True Bob, you could say, they left their opponents lion-down in the infirmary! 

Bob: "I don't get it."

Jim: "Why am I not surprised? Well they'll have their work cut out for them, they face a rookie team, but one from Norseland... and you know they give as good as they take." 

_______________________________________________________________________________

It looks like we have three new players joining the league, which is excellent.  The Chaos Dwarf team I (de)faced last week did in fact restart, and some others don't have many games, so a good time for new teams to jump in.  I played against a Norse team, and while the coach didn't have any tabletop experience, he's played the Cyanide game enough to understand the game pretty well.  Other than armor, Norse is a very solid & forgiving team to play, so it seemed a good match.  He got over 150k in inducements to help him along, since my team has a good deal of inflated team value already: I've won a lot of cash, so bought an an apothecary.  My Minotaur last time had rolled a 10, and I'd decided I'd take the armor boost.  I'd also had a skilled up skaven & marauder who took wrestle & sure hands respectively. 

The Norse team skipped the Yheti and took 2 werewolves, 2 berzerkers, 2 catchers, a thrower and 4 linemen. He also had 3 rerolls, skill choices: leader and guard, with some cash left to save for an Apothecary. He chose another reroll and a Bloodweiser babe for inducements. 

I got +1 Fame, the weather was nice and I chose to kick, figuring it was nicer to set up first since it was the first time he played in 3-D.  Kick off: Blitz! Oh my.. I didn't plan it... really. He'd set up with a solid front line, not much I could do with it, but it was still favorable for me.  My minotaur spent 3 turns trying to move, and failing his wild animal. I couldn't spare the blitz for him as I needed it to put pressure on his ball carrier, which the mino wasn't anywhere in range of. 

He kept the ball back for a couple turns, and as he got closer I was able to get the ball from him.   I scooped it up with the ferret, and ran to within a turn from scoring, but he was able to get a 1 die blitz and knock her out. Over the next few turns he drove the ball down, in range to score, and I one-die blitzed him: knocked out the ball carrier in return.  I then managed to get the ball with another and make a long pass to my goblin, but the Norse intercepted the ball (despite 2 TZ on him) and so the half ended 0-0.  In the first half however, he killed my Minotaur! My apothecary did the best he could: armor bust.  Guess it's good I chose the armor boost!  It means the mino isn't a complete weak link, but 6 SPP accomplishing nothing, and 30 team value wasted- so I'll be replacing the minotaur as soon as I can afford to buy another... such a shame: a short but impressive career. 

(The skaven are proxy werewolves until he can get a new team)

The second half I received and tried to score fast.  I was losing the block-fest since the Norse have so much of it and enough rerolls to pull of dodging around. I set up to stall it a bit, but with a few Norse in striking distance, one extra turn delay, with risk didn't seem worth it, so I ran it in.  I did manage to get one of his players knocked out, so since I had a marauder on the bench I was now one player up on him. 

I kicked and he made a drive down my right flank. I did a pretty good job tying him up, but he did punch through and get to where just one dodge would free him up to score- which he did.  He also injured my bear..  in return I knocked out 2 more, but I just wasn't rolling injuries. 

With just 2 turns to go, I knew I had a chance to win still, with the throw team mate move: But it'd have to be the troll. First I cleared a path for the troll, but the ball had scattered so far back I had to pass to the goblin, meaning I'd have to try it turn 8. Though in the process of clearing a fawn killed his guard Blitzer!  Ouch! 

He did get a lineman to base the troll, so I blitzed him off and started rolling the dice... Troll stupid? rolled a 2: he's fine.  Hungry? Nope.  Roll for the throw: fumble! argh! reroll? 4+: so try: get's an inaccurate pass... that's ok.  Mark where the aim is: roll for scatter: back to the right (can still make it with a go-for-it)- back to the left (can still make it with 2 go-for-its) just don't scatter 6,7or 8... rolled a 6: back to left, and out of range to score.. roll to stick the landing: landed just fine, but no chance to score.  Game ends in a tie 1-1. Checking the odds: about 5.28% chance of scattering back 3 times out of range. *sigh* ah well, that's Blood Bowl!

End of game, he rolled 10k for cash, so it will be some time before he can buy a replacement blitzer.  I rolled 70k.. The Norse didn't get any skills, but a wolf got MVP and the other was the one who did 2 injuries, so both are close to their first skill. 

For me, my frog (goblin) got the MVP and got an agility boost, and a fawn edged up to his first skill: taking block... maybe boring, but I need more than 1 player with block. 

Until next time...