Warhammer 40,000: The Iconoclasts

When I accompanied you to the holy place called Bethel, there to join you in celebrating the Collect, after the use of the Church, I came to a villa called Anablatha and, as I was passing, saw a lamp burning there. Asking what place it was, and learning it to be a church, I went in to pray, and found there a curtain hanging on the doors of the said church, dyed and embroidered. It bore an image either of Christ or of one of the saints; I do not rightly remember whose the image was. Seeing this, and being loth that an image of a man should be hung up in Christ's church contrary to the teaching of the Scriptures, I tore it asunder and advised the custodians of the place to use it as a winding sheet for some poor person.

- From Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamis, in Cyprus, to John, Bishop of Jerusalem

My 40k Chaos Space Marines represent the Iconoclast Host, a loose collection of Chaos Marine warbands sworn to Lorgar and the Word Bearers Legion. Based on the demon shrine world of Techke Baranos, the Iconoclasts haunt the Acheron sector. They've subverted the hive world of Kirov and attracted the support of various renegades, including Chaos Squats and even Knights; they participated in the Ignatian Rebellion, and who knows what else they've been getting up to since.

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The latest thing my Iconoclasts did was get wiped out by Grey Knights. So obviously I've demanded a rematch, which we've set for 1 000 points, and have been thinking hard about how to counter their mobility and psychic dominance.

A good place to start would seem to be to bring an HQ that can do some psykering and counter-psykering. My first thought was a Sorcerer, but to be honest, the Dark Hereticus discipline just isn't great. I have fond memories of my Sorcerer using Warptime to launch my Berzerkers into a blob of Imperial Guard conscripts, which would solve both of my problems at one stroke - if 9th edition hadn't nerfed Warptime by prohibiting charges after it. The Grey Knights had no such limitations! Frankly, most of the other powers aren't great, either.

My original idea was actually for an army of exactly 500 points featuring a Sorcerer, but then I looked at the Master of Possession. You get Masters of Possession in Gladius, and while they have their uses, I tend to find both other hero choices more useful. The Malefic discipline is just so much better than the Sorcerer's, though, and they have both an anti-psyker aura and staff. Clearly this is who I need.

Hilariously, the GW model is totally unavailable. It came in several bigger boxes, but now can't be bought anywhere. Not that I particularly liked it anyway, so I hardly mind having to build my own. But it just never ceases to amaze me how often GW just refuses to take our money. (The model was re-released shortly after I finished mine)

My starting point is this Legion of the Damned marine I bought on eBay.

As I learned earlier, the old Legion marines aren't actually that badly out of scale, they're just a little short in the leg. I extended my guy's upper legs and torso, which made them almost as tall as one of the new Legionnaires.

The copper wire is actually firm enough to hold the different parts in place until the gaps are filled with green stuff. The lower legs do end up looking a bit stubby, but I don't think that'll be very noticable on the tabletop.

The next step was to add arms and a backpack from the Exalted Sorcerers kit, and an old CSM icon.

I'm actually really happy with how this looks! Final additions are a Greater Good skull and Bad Squiddo mushroom on the base, and some Anvil parchments for a Word Bearers touch.

And then some paint.

After painting, I added a few sprinkles of green flock and a tuft of Gamers Grass Wild Flowers. I was inspired by Aekold Helbrass and his Breath of Life, and wanted a little extra Chaos in my Chaos.

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That's not all we can do on the psychic front, either. The Chaos Marines in Kill Team got an option to have a squad-level psyker, and 9th edition brought that over to 40k. So if I take a unit of Legionaries, which is just a fancy name for Chaos Space Marines, I can make one of them into a psyker by paying 20 points for a Balefire tome. This seems to me to be a very Word Bearers thing to do.

She has a Statuesque Miniatures Bionic Roider head, some Wargame Exclusive books and some Anvil parchments. Another Kill Team weapon option I went for was the heavy chainaxe. I quite like the way the Scab Maulers in Darktide look, so I tried to do something a little similar here.

As none of the wargear options other than the Balefire tome actually cost anything (for now!), there's really no reason to not give the Aspiring Champion a daemon blade. The sword in question is a Kromlech vibro katana, and the Champion is also decorated with a Wargame Exclusive Imperial book, and has a Statuesque head.

When I was painting my Horus Heresy Word Bearers, I came up with the idea of having a sort of apprentice chaplain in each squad called a deacon. Here's a 40k one.

And here's the whole squad.

I also made a chaincannon guy, because hey, why not.

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So that should give me at least some tools to counter the Grey Knights' relentless space wizard fuckery. The other need I identified was for speed, and with the help of a convenient French bits store and some stuff left over from my Deathwatch Vanguard Veterans, I intend to address it. Here are some Warp Talons.

The Champion has a Statuesque Roider head, and Warp Talon claws.

I made a Deacon for the Warp Talons as well, and he has a Kromlech Cranium Pattern head, and Wargame Exclusive book as well as some Anvil parchments.

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With the points I had left, I decided to give my Chaos Dreadnought another chance. If it just blows up again, I'll know to bring something else next time. That still left me with something like 20 points, so I decided it was now time for my first Chaos Spawn.

The body is a Minotaur, the tentacles and head are from my Beast of Nurgle, and the rest are random daemon and Tyranid bits I had. I think the overall impression is fairly, well, spawn-y.

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So, here's the Word Bearers half of my 1000 point army:

HQ - Master of Possession - 105 points

Troops - Legionaries (6) - 108 pts

 + Balefire Tome (20) = 128 points [233]

Fast Attack - Warp Talons (5) - 140 points [373]

Elites - Helbrute - 105 points [478]

Fast Attack - Chaos Spawn - 25 points [503]

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It was painting Horus Heresy that made me realize I actually really like the dark red I've picked for my Word Bearers, and I'm happy to bring it over to 40k. I mean yes, if I ever field a big Chaos Marine army, it's going to look like a whole bunch of different armies all rolled into one, but if it's a problem that Chaos looks, well, chaotic...

Our rematch will hopefully happen soon!

Horus Heresy: Looking for Allies

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've been very much enjoying getting into Horus Heresy, if only because I keep getting new modeling ideas all the time.

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.

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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...

Warhammer 40,000: Let's Build Munitorum Containers

I've been on a terrain-building kick lately, and now it's time to continue it with some containers.

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A while ago, I found some money on the street. Literally, there was a wad of banknotes. I turned it in to the proper authorities, but when no-one showed up to claim it, the amount was deposited into my account. It wasn't a huge sum, but since it was almost literally a windfall, I decided to spend it on something stupid that I couldn't possibly justify buying otherwise. Because I'd been looking at Kill Team terrain at the time, that stupid thing ended up being this Munitorum Munitions Hub box.

This is just a wonderful, huge box of terrain, with ten armored containers, piles of crates and barrels, and even cranes and vehicles. My second full-time job ever was at the Helsinki harbor, specifically at the now-vanished container terminal in the Western Harbor, and I suppose as a legacy of that, I kind of have a thing for containers? So I sort of really wanted this terrain box, but I could never have justified spending this much money. But it came down to either this box or the Armada Super Star Destroyer, and I'm pretty sure this will spark more joy.

Then, of course, the pandemic happened, and we never did get to play any Kill Team, or, indeed, anything else that couldn't be done over email, so terrain dropped pretty far down my list of priorities, and the munitions hub gathered dust on a high shelf.

Now that we're playing 40k again, though, it's time to get started. Here's my first new piece of terrain: a container.

Bearing the livery of an obscure trading house, this container was an absolutely lovely model to assemble. Each sprue in the box has one container as well as several crates and barrels, and it's been a joy to tinker with them. On that note, here's another container.

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For my first slightly bigger project, I'm going to stick some containers together. But first, I want to build an interior for one of them. Any Imperial settlement is going to have innumerable places for people to hide away, either for a little nap during their work shift, or as a whole illicit residence of their own. So I made this little bedroll out of green stuff:

Here's the whole thing painted, with a Fallout crate and some boxes from the container sprue added.

I then seem to have entirely neglected to take any pictures of the rest of the build! Anyway, now it's done:

I know grimdark is very much the thing, but I've found I have a certain nostalgia for the bright corporate colors of the 1980's, and wanted to bring some of that into my 40k as well. The top container follows my Epic terrain theme. Next, I gave my containers a cardboard base.

Then I glued on some sand, painted and varnished it, and it was time for the next components.

Meanwhile, a whole bunch of Necromunda terrain got released, including the lovely Underhive Market set. The large market stall was simply perfect for what I had in mind, so I built one and painted it orange.

I also have some Fallout workbenches from Mōdiphiüs, and I thought the armorer's workbench would look cute here.

I glued in the workbench and one of the Munitorum crates, and added sand.

And then it's time for the market stall.

Obviously I couldn't resist adding a Nuka-Cola machine and a crate or two, and then it was just a question of more PVA glue and sand until the whole thing was done!

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This was a fun little project. I'm very happy I got the Munitorum box, and I've barely gotten started: there's still all kinds of stuff in there...