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So on the third article the Relictors army is taking shape, with two troops and a HQ finished...
However, with the two tactical squads being maunted in rhinos, the commander looks a bit lonely, stood on his own.
So he gets one of the most essential items of wargear for any character... a squad of his own!
A Space Marine command squad was thrown together, minimum sized to begin with, four marines and a random sergeant from my bitz box (temporarily as a stand in.. hence he's not shown...)
The Marines were assembled as the rest of the army, the flash filed off, the Relictors shoulderpad adding, bolter barrels drilled out and the covering up of the Dark Angel icons with small skulls...
I had the pieces for two marines with flamers as well, choosing to keep these separate until I'd painted the rest of the squad...
All command squads need characters, and a Techmarine and Apothecary needed place in the unit.
By now I'd used Azreal, Asmodai and would be using Bethor for the sergeant (more later), so I was running out of Dark Angels characters to use.
This is until I remembered the Fallem Angel character Cypher. With the skeleton iconography, I could see him as an Apothecary.
I removed the fallen icons and his arms, and left the Lion Sword and his backpack off.
After filing I thought that his open legs would stand out too much from the rest of the unit, so greenstuffed a loincloth piece of robe. An Imperial plasmapistol replaced his MasterCrafted one, again enforcing a link to the force.
A Apothecary's backpack went on and a Relictors shoulderpad and Apothecary arm from the Blood Angels Honour guard completed the medic look.
Next up was a Techmarine to accompany the squad.
I had the Blood Angels Honourguard Techmarine Torso already and needed a set of legs. The bitz box yeilded a painted Azreal, so after a soak in cellulose thinners and an incident with a Hacksaw, I had Azreal's legs on my desk. A quick file to take off the Dark Angel symbols and to cut a groove in the front meant the Techmarine torso sat on there pretty well.
As the Techmarine torso had an arm with an Adeptus Mechanicus cog-axe, It'd be a shame to waste the fantastic handle. So the cog section came off and a WHFB Chaos Warrior (older one) hammer head went on there spot on.
A standard marine arm was placed to be reaching for his pistol with a shoulderpad had the main body sorted.
For the Servo arm, everyone takes the Space Marine Servo Arm. Hovever, The servo arm hasn't much use to me... it can carry stuff but is hardly useful. So I took a Space Marine Backpack and cut the side vents off, gluing two of Fabius Bile's drill arms on (as opposed to the drill and the syringe) before gluing the vents back on. I also added a handflamer gas canifster on top as it'd need extra tekkie parts!
Once I had painted the marines and characters I painted a rhino so the Commander and his posse wouldn't be walking!
I then gathered the components for two flamer marines and a normal marine and assembled them as per usual... they are still only undercoated!
I was still trying to work out which model to use for the squad sergeant... as I have used all the Dark Angels characters I can currently think of... Then I remembered Brother Bethor! The standard bearer would look good converted to be holding a sword up (very reminiscant of the original Dark Andels sergeant). So he's on my shopping list
With the HQ sorted, I thought I would add some Fast Attack to the force.
A unit of Assault Marines would fit the army well, moreso than bikes (remembering this is a force that needed to mobilise quickly to get off the planet).
However, while I was holding a jump pack to a Dark Angels veteran, I couldn't see the jump pack troops wearing robes... I could see the Marines' robes igniting when they jumped.. not very practical. Plus landing in heavy long skirt would be a bad thing… I can see the traitor guard laughing themselves to death as either a rain of burning marines or the ones not on fire tripping over when they landed...
So while I was pondering, I remembered the Legion Of The Damned Marines that were released.. covered in flame and bone, they would look great as Assault troops, covered in icons of Death and honour marks (the assault squads were always the most highly decorated in Rogue Trader as they were always first into the breach).
So a squad of Legion were put together.
Again, all the flash was cleaned off and Relictors shoulderpads added.
Marine Jump packs weer easily procured as were the Chainswords / boltpistols.
For the Veteran Sergeant, I used the top half of a Dark Angels Marine and heavily modified Chaos Marine Legs with robes around the waist to make him stand out from his squad.
A Emperors Children blade became his Daemon Weapon and his shoulderpad was sculpted (all the Veterans have non-standard Chapter Icons and each has an individual Daemon Weapon)
Two Marines were converted to hold twin plasmapistols, again to make them stand out (in many marine forces the plasmapistol toting Assault marines you haveto look very very carefully to see who has what).
Again, not completely finished painting them yet... but am working on it!
Tune in next time for the 1st and 10th!
Rage
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