Many creatures which once had shunned this desert ventured to live here now. Many in the band remarked how the daylight owls proliferated. Even now, Ghanima could see antbirds. They jigged and danced along the insect lines which swarmed in the damp sand at the end of the shattered qanat. Few badgers were to be seen out here, but there were kangaroo mice in uncounted numbers.
- Frank Herbert, Children of Dune
I like the rulebook and Liber Hereticus because there's a lot of stuff in there. For example, there's this relationship chart, without which I would never have realized that the Salamanders are the friendship is magic legion.
More to the point, it tells me that my Word Bearers aren't really super friends with anybody except the Sons of Horus. I do like their color scheme, but other than that, eh. None of the special units exactly inspire me, and the legion as a whole is just not that interesting to me. All of the fun factions, though, are less close friends and more in the sort of casual acquaintances line.
**
Since I've already got some Thousand Sons for 40k, I have to admit I'm partial to building some for 30k as well. Besides, the magic robots and psyker dreadnoughts are pretty cool. It also occurs to me that the funniest possible Thousand Sons unit would be a Scout squad, and once I'd thought of it I really wanted to build it.
I decided they should have Nemesis bolters, and frankly, the Nemesis bolters on some of the Forge World models just look like boringly generic sniper rifles. Not to mention that the whole idea of a silencer on a bolter is absolutely ludicrous. So I bought a box of regular scouts and took their bolters apart.
I then drilled a couple of tiny holes, superglued in some copper wire, and reassembled the bolter to be longer.
Then it was a simple matter of filling in the gap with green stuff, and we have Nemesis bolters.
I had two telescopic sights in my collection of space marine bits.
For the other three, I chopped sights off some unused Deathwatch bolters.
Then we add some Statuesque Miniatures beret and veteran heads, and we have a Scout Squad.
This is what the Sergeant looks like painted up:
And here's the Scout squad Viman-dadaran-ich, the very producers of doubt, in its entirety.
**
The problem with Thousand Sons, though, is that since they're only Distrusted Allies, they can't score objectives for me. But Word Bearers actually have precious few legions that they're really friends with, which makes sense because they are theologians. Apart from the previously mentioned Sons of Horus and Salamanders, it's just the Emperor's Children, White Scars, and... Dark Angels.
Back in 2019, I got the Vigilus Ablaze campaign book so my Dark Apostle could use the new prayers in our next game. As it happens, Vigilus Ablaze also had rules for a specialist detachment of Fallen, and I wanted to make one. The first model I finished was a Sorcerer with an improvised combi-plasma, made from the Fallen/Dark Angels Veteran kit.
I gave them old-style Librarian heraldry.
Since then, the Fallen were completely dropped from 9th edition, so I suppose this dude is now a 30k Dark Angel Librarian? Mk VII armor was around during the Heresy, it's not completely impossible. While I was at it, how was I supposed to resist Wargame Exclusive's Cypheria? I suppose I could field her as a Moritat...
This all gave rise to another conversion idea. I have a slightly ancient Legion of the Damned sergeant from 3rd edition, and I'd thought about using the model as a chaplain earlier. It's just that there's a problem. Scale creep.
Looking more closely at the model, the torso is more or less the same size as the Mk VIs, but the legs are a lot shorter. I think that's a problem I can solve.
Here we go! While I was at it, I added the Mk VI power sword.
Using the same method that got me the Thousand Sons scouts, I feel like the objectively funniest Dark Angels character to make would be an Esoterist. So while I was at it, I added some Dark Angels bits and a Kromlech Book of Damnation.
Here we go, then:
I managed to get that green stuff shaped at least decently, I think, so I feel like this is going to work! I'm going to argue that this is a variant of Mk V power armour. I think I more or less solved the scale issue:
Here they are all painted up. I'm very happy with this!
**
It's a well-known fact that Warhammer has stolen huge amounts of fluff from Dune. Navigators, proscribed computer technologies, the Imperial religious bureaucracy, and so on. The Warhammer 40,000 timeline is, I think quite explicitly, written so that the events of Dune fit neatly in it.
Even though it's a science fiction classic, I have to admit I only got around to reading Dune after the new movie came out. It was not only a great movie, but also hands down the most Warhammer movie ever made, which is obviously not a coincidence. As I was reading the novels, I started thinking about incorporating some Dune content in my Warhammer hobbying. I was quite pleased, then, when I came across this in Dune Messiah:
A heliograph of 'thopter wings flashed in the bright afternoon sun above the temple, part of the Royal Guard with Muad'dib's fist-symbol on its fuselage.
Muad'dib's fist-symbol! That's it: in my headcanon, the Imperial Fists are now Fremen. I don't know what the deal is with emperors having royal guards, but they did it in Star Wars as well, even though "royal" most definitely means something related to a king, not an emperor.
I've always been slightly partial to the Imperial Fists color scheme anyway, because the yellow is such a bold choice, and I quite often ended up playing as them in the Space Crusade video game. So I hit up the excellent Victoria Miniatures for some appropriate heads, and we're ready to go.
I'm going to start by painting up the sword Praetor from the Age of Darkness box as an Imperial Fists Praetor. I chopped up one of Victoria's Desert Torsos A for an appropriate head. I also couldn't decide whether I should swap the volkite charger for a bolter, in order to take advantage of the legion bonus. I've left the volkite on for now.
While I wasn't really interested in any of the Rites of War available to my Word Bearers, there are actually several Imperial Fists ones that I might want to try: the Hammerfall Strike Force or even the Stone Gauntlet.
I freehanded the army badge and some Imperial Fists heraldry onto the right shoulder pad.
I'm actually kinda happy with this model, and I may now have to start thinking about a command squad for them.
**
One of the ironies of all this is that a big reason I bought the Age of Darkness box in the first place was that I wanted to build Fallen for 40k. Only for the Fallen to then completely disappear from the game. Nonetheless, I've quite enjoyed trying out different legion paint schemes and so on. I'm definitely attracted to the idea of Dune-themed Imperial Fists, but I think I also have some ideas for more Dark Angels...
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