Monday, April 15, 2013

Archive HFH Up date 3 -Elite-

Greetings Archivists!

Before I start rambling about the wonderful world of bio-engineered horrors from outer spacer, I would like to direct your eyes on bio+metal-engineered horrors from outer space.

Studio McVey just released a picture of the next Sedition Wars additions...
next to a quite stompy exo-suite for the vanguard there is a grand monster of the strain to be seen:
Isn't she sweet? I envy all and everybody living in the UK being able to go the Salute. One fine day, when I am rich and famous, I shall be able to go as well :D I can't wait for SW: Arms of Sorrow... I figure that this monster will be part of the game...


Back to the Bio-engineered Horrors from outer space.
This time I want to drag your attention on the Elite Section of the various codices. Over the years, the section has seen some changes, but the biggest was surely the current Edition. One enormous change was, that the Warriors, the standard Elite-Choice for me, changed into the Troops section.
That made space of all kind of creepiness. In fact so much new creatures were added, that I never came around to add them all to my collection. I just made models for all the ones, I thought would fit game wise.

We start with one of the crazy concepts the "new" codex gave us.
The "Nemesis of Malantai"
Nemesis, I hear you say? Yes, the German translation turned the English "Doom" into "Nemesis". This is one of the very very few examples where I like the German translation better than the original (and let me tell you.... there are some really wierd translations, especially in the DE Codex. Gives you the feeling you have to learn a whole new language.... and that, not in a good way...).

So the "Nemesis" was a concept totally new to nid players. Until then, the soul never played a big role for nids. All we were interested in was bio matter. And suddenly we had a vacuum-cleaner with the power to destroy whole units in THEIR shooting-phase. Oh, the awesome games I had against Orks...
Sadly after a few games, everybody new their potential and tried to kill them on the spot. That, luckily gave me time to move more important units forward.
The Nemesis is one of the few (unique) characters, I have done twice. The first was just for gaming purposes. The idea for the second came in my dreams to me. Yes, sounds weird, I know... but that's the way it was.

 A pretty simple conversion. You can almost spot every component used...













I wanted to have the "soul sucking" aspect visualised on the "Doom of Malantai". At first I had that guy having his soul sucked out through the eyes and mouth.... until I saw that awesome skull...

Next we have the Hive Guard.
While, in all honesty, the fluff concept really lacks coolness and rationality, the rules hit a nerve in the Hiveminds needs. The concept of a static, defensive and protecting organism never made sense to me. At least not in the way the hiveminds approach on prey-worlds is described in the fluff...
The rules made them so important that everybody had to have some of them.
As you might have figured already, I loath models that look the same. So I decided to scratch my own hiveguards. Here is what I came up with...
Liktors!
Liktors are probably every nid players favourite. Model and fluff wise one of the most impressive concepts GW has ever thrown out imho.
Sadly the 2nd edition was the only Edition that had appropriate rules. Moloch and myself have been trying everything we could to gain influence on the design team to let them change the rules and make the Liktors deadly and threatening again. Simply put: We failed. Now, the only units that are afraid of a Liktor might be a Chimera... which is really really weird.
I have quite a lot of Liktors kicking around. But until the gain better rules, this shall be the only one posted:




Finally we have the Venomthropes.
Funky concept, interesting fluff and, with some twists, really cool models.
I didn't like the tentacle-grab-pose the models had. With a little bending, the tentacles could gain a less "aggressive" and more "hey I can actually do something useful with these things... IE: WALK" pose.


So, that's it for this time.
Next up... Sedition Wars again :D


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