One week project: Deathwatch Kill-Team

My POP Goes The Monkey Deathwatch shoulder pad sets arrived in the mail yesterday and I spent a pleasant afternoon building a six man Kill-Team. There's a fantastic reinvigorated to being able to expand beyond the one provided in the Kill-Team box set.

So I'm going to try and paint this Kill-Team across a couple of sessions this week.

Aside from the shoulder pads they have a simple and uniform colour scheme. This team (known informally as Team Shifty) is led by a Star Phantom and features an Exorcist, a Marine Malevolent, an Emperor's Hand, an Angel Sanguine and a Black Dragon. All chapters with dark secrets or suspicious reputations (apart from the Emperor's Hands who it turns out have no background whatsoever and I was thinking of someone else).

This will also be the final test phase for these 3D printed shoulder pads: they fit the models perfectly, were easy to remove from their sprue and have excellent detail. Now I just have to see how easy they are to paint. They are a little more delicately detailed than the GW equivalent so it may take extra effort to paint them properly (there's an Angels of Vigilance symbol so minutely detailed I genuinely worry about getting to that one). 

The Legion of Substitute Miniatures: Deathwatch insignia from Shapeways

In particular, the store of one POP Goes the MONKEY (spelt like that) aka Matt Sweitzer. Shapeways is a digital marketplace for 3D printed products and there are so many knock-off bits for 40k.

I am serious, if there is a super obscure Space Marine chapter that you love and you want an army but you can't freehand the chapter emblem to save your life just go on Shapeways. They're all there! I am perfectly serious. Most of them, in fact, are available from this POP fellow. His store is actually pretty well laid out because, obviously, none of these shoulder pad and insignia sets have the right names because of trademark law so it can take some searching.

However, POP Goes the Monkey sorts their insignia by not only by armour mark but by general categories of the emblem: animals, body parts, general shapes and the like.

He also does mixed sets for Deathwatch armies. Previously they were ten assorted chapter-specific shoulder pads but he also has this...

… which contains thirty distinct chapter heraldry designed to be glued onto the shoulder pad. Okay, some of them are ones from the Deathwatch Kill-team set itself but alternate uses can always be found. That Ultramarines ultra? Stick it onto the shoulder pad upside down and you have the Sons Of Orar. Do that same thing and shave the wings off that Angels Sanguine skull at the bottom? Stuck it in the middle of the upside down ultra and you have the Omega Marines.

Plus, it has the Rainbow Warriors chapter badge. That deserves a recommendation all on its own.

Once these arrive I'm going to have to trawl Lexicanum to see if any of the doubles can be used for alternate chapters (the Guardians of the Covenant crossed swords can also be used for Sable Swords, for instance). Hopefully this “Deathwatch Set1” will be just the first of several such deals. Not that I'll be in any hurry, I can likely get four or five Kill-Teams out of this set. 

Capitalism, morality and getting the best Abaddon for your buck

I am not going to mince words or dance around it: this is an Abaddon model. This is Abaddon the Despoiler wearing his Terminator armour armed with Drach'nyen and the Talon of Horus. Its Abaddon. Officially, of course, this is the Chaos Master Of The Crusade from Grimskull and sold by Wargames Exclusive via their eBay store. They're a Ukrainian company and so IP rights can go hang.

(Actually, funny thing, one of the eBay listing for this model was simply titled “NotAbaddon”).

Let's address the moral gray area here: there is an existing Games Workshop Abaddon the Despoiler model. It is, however, awful. Its old, its chunky and its built on a smaller scale than almost anything you're likely to stand next to it. Its only selling point compared to the Grimskull version is that its cheaper (£15 against £26-ish including postage and packing) and quicker to acquire just because of distance.

But I just don't want it. It looks awful. I don't game much in GW clubs so the blanket (and understandable) ban on third party miniatures doesn't really stand to inconvenience me plus the local GW club has a 1000 points / 50 power army limit so I'd likely not use Abaddon there anyway. The fact that this isn't an official GW miniature doesn't inconvenience me in any immediate sense other than the fact it took three weeks to arrive.

And, finally: capitalism is not a moral system. It is not my job as a consumer to put up with an inferior product for the benefit of Games Workshop. I have no doubt that if GW decided to replace their Abaddon model it would be superior to this; made of plastic with a greater selection of options; have the right iconography sculpted on; been usable in club environments should I choose to; and, more convenient to buy. If that model existed, I'd have probably bought it even though it would likely have weighted in at £5 to £10 more than the Grimskull version.

They did not provide that option. My money went to the Ukrainians. That's capitalism.

Now, obviously, I can't argue that Grimskull are in the right in making and selling this thing. It is obviously Abaddon and that's IP infringement. If and when a GW lawyer braces the oblast to serve a cease and desist... well, you pays your money you takes your chance. That is also capitalism.

And I got a good Abaddon out of it, that's all that matters. 

The Legion of Substitute Miniatures #1: Female Chaos Marauders

With Warhammer Fantasy no longer being a going proposition I'm always on the lookout for interesting alternative models. The other day I was trawling eBay on my regular trawl for out of production High Elves characters (there are so many great ones...) and after a little link-following stumbled across these:

Shieldwolf Miniatures' Shield Maiden Infantry. Twenty models with options for hand weapons, shields, spears and crossbows. For my purposes the crossbows aren't important but I mention them for completeness.

Now, it may seem unfair to look at these models and see them only as alternatives for another company's models but, to be frank, there's no chance that I'd ever get to play Shieldwolf's own game system so this is the only way they'd get my money.

(Well, that an eBay seller would get my money and they got his money but you know what I mean. Money was got and ultimately it was got because I play Warhammer.)

So, female Chaos Marauders. There's a Kickstarter coming soon for more heavily armoured female miniatures who could easily be their Chaos Warriors. So, if you ever wanted to do Valkia's Horde of Chaos Ladies or just wanted to represent the fact the Norscans are a warrior culture and that maybe their womenfolk might be involved here's a good option.

You could also use them as Kislevite Kossars which would be a good use for the crossbows. I know Kossars are armed with ordinary bows rather than crossbows but they have access to Empire technology so it wouldn't be entirely out of line or you could simply count the crossbows as ordinary bows. Kislevites are quick on their feet it makes sense that they'd have worked out how to walk and aim at the same time.

For my part, though, they'll be Marauders because, as usual, my conception of Chaos is very, very influenced by the less technologically advanced peoples of Game of Thrones so basically a cross between Dothraki, the Free Folk and the Hill Tribes.

Any character I create for them will be less annoying than Ygritte.