Grand Inquisitorial Retinue - Death Cult Assassins (The Sisters of Slaughter)

One of the big units in my army is 9 Death Cult Assassins backed by a Ministorum Priest and my Ordo Malleus Inquisitor in terminator armour (more on him in a later post), all hopping out of a land raider.

These girls rock.

The fact they all have power swords and attack at initiative 6 with a weapon skill of 5 and strength of 4 makes them something to be feared even by Terminators. The priest praising hymns to the emperor makes them even more deadly. I could go on what makes these girls so awesome on the tabletop.

So I was able to build 9 of them from some bits I ordered. I think they turned out great. I followed pretty much the same formula for the first 2 I made in a previous post.

Grand Inquisitorial Retinue - Crusaders

Next members of my retinue are the Crusaders.

Crusaders are elites of a secret ecclesiarchal order called the Cardinals Crimson. They are a rare few who wield Storm Shields outside of the Space Marine Terminators. Their role is protection, and they will be protecting one of my Inquisitors. Which one that will be is up to playtesting.

You may recognize the one on the right as being Hagar the Devout. The one of the left is new. Thaddeus the Pure uses about the same parts as Hagar, with the exception to the new cloak. I was particularly proud of the way this one flows around his torso. It is from the Cadre Fireblade plastic kit. The sword is also a standard power sword from the Tempestus Scions kit. It's too late for me to keep Hagar as wysiwyg, but I can at least do it for Thaddeus.

Grand Inquisitorial Retinue - Servitors w/ Plasma Cannons

As I said in a previous post, I plan on making a full Inquisition army. That's 1850 points using 2 Inquisitorial detachments. I think the inquisition army has a lot of strengths, but it would also have a lot of weaknesses. It is true that when reading through the codex, it doesn't seem 'complete', and whatever it is lacking is meant to be filled in with allies, or a main army it's allying with.

My goal with this army is to take it to a grand tournament, and prove they can hold their own... pretty well. This series of posts will outline the different units in my Grand Inquisitorial Army, and my progress for the upcoming tournament, as well as playtesting results.

First are 3 servitors with plasma cannons.

These 3 servitors are cheap for what they bring, but when not grouped with an Inquisitor they have a chance of succumbing to mindlock and freezing the entire unit. But for 20 pts each, they pack quite a punch, toting a plasma cannon, instead of just the regular infantry plasma gun.

The conversion was inspired by something similar I saw on the internet. The legs are made from the Sentinel kit's chainsaw arm. The plasma cannon is from the Leman Russ tank kits. The camera top is a battlesuit target lock. The back unit is from Grey Knights, and the side cabling is from Tempestus Scion cables used for the hot-shot lasguns.

Commander Truestrike's Fi'rios Expedition Cadre (Part 2)

(Part 1 here)

These are my XV88 Broadside conversions. I don't like the 'missile fist' look, and love the giant rail rifle holding stance, so I found online someone who was able to make them work together. Good thing is this is magnetized so I can choose to give it the twin-linked heavy rail rifles instead just by pulling off the missile pod and sticking the rifle barrels on. These guys pulled in a really nice kill number for my games and were the basis of my gun-line.

You've seen these before in my previous post. Not much said about them other than the fact that I loved how well they performed. Do not underestimate their basic Burst Cannons configuration.

The riptide conversion and posing I am particularly proud of. Under its feet is an old Imperial Guard Sentinel kit I had and bashed it up to look like it was vanquished by the battlesuit. My frined, Timo, is a Guard player and so this was an homage to our many battles together.

The final part of my army is are my Lizard Kroot. Their job, like the Fire Warriors, was objective camping. Despite being pretty weak, they are cheap and can hold that role well in a pinch, but they are cheap and don't expect a lot of durability from them. The conversion is pretty much a combination of Lizardmen Skinks and Kroot. I think they turned out very well.

This is me (on the left) in one of our games. My first win in the tournament against an Ultramarine player. Boards like these were common and every single one was unique and had different rules on them.

I had an excellent time and I do plan on going back next year. This time I will be bringing an all Inquisition army. A chellenge to say the least, but I am passionate about it.

Commander Truestrike's Fi'rios Expedition Cadre (Part 1)

In October I took my Tau army to the Harvester of Souls in Spokane Valley Washington. It was a ton of fun. The game store there is amazing with a dedicated Warhammer room, decked out with wall paintings dedicated to the grimdark future. If you ever find yourself near Spokane Valley, I recommend you give the Gamer's Haven a visit.

That's me, in the red.

Overall I took 9th place out of 36. I only won 2 out of my 5 games I played, but a good portion of your score goes toward the painting, presentation, sportsmanship, and people voting favorite opponents and favorite armies. I loved this format because it encouraged good sportsmanship over minmaxing a game and being a rules lawyer. Even with those 3 losses, all of my opponents were good sportsmen and a blast to play with. Fortunately I didn't see any of the ugly side of a tournament scene most people complain about.

About my army:

My Tau were Truestrike's Fi'rios Expedition Cadre. Commander Truestrike (Shas'o Fi'rios Kono're) is my own character that I love to forge a story with for every game, and this is the 1850 point single Combined Arms Detachment he took with him to the Harvester of Souls.

We had to submit our armies on a display board for overall appearance, and while I like tradittional sand, I went with a not so traditional color. I have an obsession with Mars, so I did go for a red martian sands basing. Overall I think it turned out well. The entire appearance as a whole just popped.

This is Commander Truestrike. Here he is attached to a unit of 3 Crisis suits all with missile pods (Those little rail rifle things are counts-as missile pods). He is a buff build, so he does no shooting. Just gives plenty of awesome bonuses to whoever he is attached to, like twin-linked everything and ignores cover. In his right arm is a counts-as Onager Gauntlet, but I made it from some stolen Necron tech from a previous story campaign.

These are 2 6-man fire warrior squads. Their job was objective camping and a way to bring in 2 Devilfish trooper carriers, both of which proved to be excellent objective takers and defense themselves. The shield wall was my counts-as Aegis Defense Line and Comms Relay.

This is my Fusion Blaster squad. Their entire role was for tank hunting. Depending on the type of enemy, I would either attach my Commander to these guys or my missile pod guys. If I was facing a lot of tanks and heavy armor, my Commander would be attached here when they dropped in. If I was facing a horde army or a lot of light vehicles, then my Commander would be where he was pictured. It worked out pretty well for a lot of situations.

More on next post.

XV9 Hazard Suit (How I did it - Part 5)

(Part 1 here) (Part 2 here) (Part 3 here) (Part 4 here)

Final bits for our kitbashed XV9 Hazard suit.

First we'll start with the arms. The Crisis suit arms are too small. So we are taking the arms from the XV88 Broadside. I never did like the missile-fist look, so instead I settled on a conversion that used the rifle hold position where you could magnetize the giant rifle and be able to swap it with the railguns and a missile pod (more on that in a later post). That conversion left these perfect arms.

 I started off by removing the lower-arm from them, but keeping the shoulder and joints.

Next the holes on the broadside arms are too small for the crisis arm pegs. I used a rotary tool to grind them out a bit more so it's a snug fit.

With the holes ground out a bit more, we can move on.

Since the broadide kit has no usable forearms, we will take them from the crisis arms.

You have to be careful to not cut up the crisis forearm, but you can its elbow joint, as we don't need that.

Now attach them to the broadside joints as pictured above. Where you glue them determines their pose, so experiment with some sticky take or something to make sure it's the position you want.

The original XV9 kit has all sorts of aerials allover the suit. This is an aerial that comes from the broadside kit. It originally goes behind the knee, but I found the broadside looked fine without it. It looks better here.

Once glue sets, get it on to your suit torso, and make sure it's the right pose.

Next we will move onto the head. All these parts are from the broadside kit. Luckily I never used them because I liked the other ones instead. I loved the traditional square looking head. These are very similar to the XV9 head.

On the XV9 head, there is a single aerial. It doesn't mount on the side of the head like a traditional battlesuit, but on the top in the middle. This head bit has a little peg for the aerial. I removed it and smoothed the area.

Glue the lens housing piece to the head. Then cut the aerial as pictured above.

Once it's cut, glue it to the top of the head. This completes the head.

In gluing it to the suit, you will need a riser. It can't stick in the original hole on the torso because it sets too deep in because we bulked up the suit. I used a ball of green stuff that I smushed onto the original hole, then smushed the new head into it. I made sure it was a position I liked. then I let the green stuff set and glued it in place. The hole I drilled in the middle of the jet pack is for a back flag I do on my suits. You will see that at the end of this post.

Final part to assemble are the guns. I opted to go with the twin-linked burst cannons, and I will go into why in the next post. The guns are from the XV25 stealthsuit kits, and the bit in the middle is a support system bit from the XV88 broadside kit. I had to shave the sides of the support system so they laid flat, and the guns had some little nub that helped it to mount to stealthsuit arms. I shaved those off so they could mount flat on a surface.

They glue together like so. As pictured, they are upside-down. When they mount on the under-arms of the suit, the aerial from the support system is supposed to be pointing down.

And here is this suit completed.

These guys were a lot of fun to discover and assemble. The back flags in each one are from Wargames Factory's Ashigaru Yari.

That's it! Hope this guide was helpful and understandable. When I took the photos, I wasn't sure how I was going to present the steps, I just photographed them as I made them.

Let me just say, that the XV9's are definitely worth it on the tabletop, even the basic loadout. I took them to a grand tournament in Spokane Valley Washington and they racked up the highest kill score for me aside from my Broadsides. Totally worth it.

XV9 Hazard Suit (How I did it - Part 4)

(Part 1 here) (Part 2 here) (Part 3 here)

This is where the XV9 really comes together. The legs and wings.

From left to right, the pictured pieces are knee-pads from an XV88 Broadside Battlesuit, little vents from a Space Marine power pack, and an XV8 Crisis Battlesuit leg.

First we need to attach the vents from the Space Marine backpacks. I removed the little nubs on the sides of the knees.

Glue on the vents. These make leg thrusters. Parts like these can simply represent the Vectored Retro-thrusters support system on battlesuits.

I put on the broadside battlesuit kneepads. These and the thrusters bulk up the legs. I also considered using Fire Warrior pauldrons.

The best feet for this are the XV88 Broadside Battlesuit feet. The XV8 feet aren't big enough. I generally start by mounting the feet first when the suit is making a standing pose. If you want to do a more dynamic running or flying pose, this part isn't necessary.

Now this thing is really starting to come together.

Moving onto the wings that are pretty signature to the XV9. Pictured above is a piece I added that the wings will mount to. This piece is the Target Lock signature system bit from the XV8 Crisis Battlesuit kit.

These are target lock signature system bits from the XV25 Stealthsuit kit. Cut them like above.

For the wings we will use the bits from the Sunshark Bomber kit. These are the wing bits on the Interceptor Drone. They have a little nub that sticks out. I removed it.

I cleared off the bottoms of 2 Shield Generator support systems from the Crisis kit. Then arrange and glue the target lock bits from the stealthsuits and the Interceptor Drone wing bits as pictured above.

Flip them upside-down and mount them on the Crisis suit target lock bits we mounted on the torso earlier. The mini-target locks are supposed to be facing back. They make up more of the vectored retro-thrusters system.

Next post will do the final parts. The arms, guns, and head.

(Part 5 here)