A Duo of Marauder Citizens (#makeatrish)

Over the last couple of months, ex-Marauder and Citadel sculptor Trish Carden (previously Trish Morrison) has been sharing a host of memories and pictures of many of her sculpts on Facebook. This has revealed that Trish has been responsible for many more classic figures than many people believed. As a celebration of Trish's output, the Oldhammer Facebook group has run a painting challenge titled #makeatrish. Below is my entry.

Call in Psy-Ops Support - Adeptus Arbites Sanctioned Psyker

I love the concept of psychic detectives (perhaps more along the lines of 2000AD's Judge Anderson than the BBC's Jonathan Creek). That odd, isolated and strange character that is nevertheless vitally important to many investigations. The specialists with glowing eyes, non-standard interrogation techniques, and the ability to force blast crims out of the way. Every sci-fi cop department could use one!

Psy-Ops are regularly employed to track down rogue psykers by following psychic signatures.

I made the sanctioned psyker from an old Van Saar leader. I removed his right pistol arm and replaced it with an arm from an old Marauder chaos thug with bow. His chainsword was replaced with a banner pole from an old plastic space marine bike to represent a force rod.

I also enlarged his cranium and added a Lobot-style psychic hood, as well as details on the right arm and tidying up a few areas.

I haven't yet thought of a name yet, although 'Judge Mental' was suggested by theottovonbismark, and I can't shake it off!

I wanted to keep the same colour palette as the rest of the Adeptus Arbites, but decided to give him a sinister black bodysuit, rather than copy the grey armour. Blue accents and grey pouches tie him to the rest of the Arbites.

I painted him mid-psyching(sp?), with a blue glow around his eyes, force rod and psychic nodes on his suit.

I plan to use him in Necromunda, which is a little problematic currently as psykers are few and far between. Initially I'm going to give him some esoteric weaponry to represent his powers:

• a grenade launcher with scare grenades as some kind of long-ranged fear type power.
• smoke grenades as a short-ranged concealment type power.

I could add in further 'powers' later by giving him a bio-scanner (psychic detection) or stimm-slug stash (psychic boost). I'm sure there's plenty of other off-beat gear he could use!

Reinforcements at Precinct 47 - Adeptus Arbites

In a few weeks time a few of us from my gaming group will be starting up a new mini Necromunda campaign whilst some of the other folks run a Warhammer 30k / Horus Heresy campaign.

I've decided to dust off my Adeptus Arbites/Enforcers using the Venator rules from White Dwarf. Selecting a team wearing mesh armour and armoured undersuits, toting shotguns and bolters is a pretty good approximation. I already had a good number of Arbiters painted, but had only really used them as NPCs and had never used them in a campaign. It was also a good opportunity to round out my groups and add in some specialists and characters.

Unholy Rituals - a Necromunda Campaign Finale

The scene of dark rituals and death.

Wilhelm the Witch lay giggling atop the slag heap crowned with its altar to the dark gods. The psychic jolt of warp energy he had received after the success of the ritual still caused his limp body to twitch and stutter in the dirt. Next to him lay the body of Lady Jayne – the bearded psychic consort of Thrubb, clad in her gaudy yellow dress embroidered with red flowers never seen here in the underhive of Necromunda. Next to Lady Jayne, Thrubb himself, the bombastic mouthpiece of his own personality cult, was slumped and bleeding heavily. The bodies of many of the Cult of Thrubb were also scattered over the broken slag piles.

Bro'og the cow-faced chaos spawn didn't last long after being targeted by a heavy bolter.

The Rewards of Chaos - Necromunda Campaign Trophies

Our current Necromunda campaign, 'Not another chaos uprising!' comes to a climax this week. As with previous campaigns, we will be rewarding player achievements through the awarding of trophies. Given that the theme of this campaign has been centred around a swelling of chaos cult activity, I chose to make the new trophies chaos themed.

The five trophies have been made simply by pinning five plastic 40k chaos cultists to resin display bases from Model Display Products. I painted four of the models silver, with the fifth painted gold. The eagle-eyed amongst you will notice that I've added Dark Tongue chaos runes (from Realm of Chaos - Lost and the Damned) to denote the different trophies.

The Path to Damnation (Part 3) - Renegade Inquisitor

The path to embracing the dark gods is not the same for all traitors. Those who defend humanity in full knowledge of the power of chaos have the furthest to fall. An Inquisitor may be tempted by the power and riches of the dark gods. Or they may be corrupted into thinking that chaos can be used against chaos. Or they may become so disillusioned and world-weary, that embracing chaos seems the logical conclusion.

The second of my chaos renegade's followers I've chosen to create is my traitor Inquisitor, Drugh. He is a potent fighter in his own right, with an excellent array of wargear.

Inquisitor Dirske finally tracks down the renegade Drugh and his followers.

The Path to Damnation (Part 2) - Ratling Renegades

When I rolled up my chaos renegade warband, I think the unit I was most pleased about was the three ratlings. Not because ratlings are iconic followers of chaos (the reverse is probably true), but because I've always enjoyed modelling and playing with figures of a ratling's stature. I even made a full ratling Inquisitorial retinue after all!

I already had four or five spare ratlings, so it was a case of selecting three to work out how to chaosify them. To my mind, the key change needed was a head swap. The classic Rogue Trader ratlings have beaming round faces - not the sort of look that a trio of corrupted ratlings would sport. In a case of serendipity, I also happened to have a selection of Maxmini's Fallen Legionnaire heads (left over from an aborted Blood Bowl hobgoblin project).

I cut off the original heads, replaced them with the nasty chaotic ones, and sculpted new collars: