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Warboss Spleenstabba
08-30-2009, 06:50 PM
Yet another thread that i posted on dakka and I hope is better received here.

Well I play the majority of the armies in the game and each one has a theme: Vior la Tau, (my first army), Armageddon Death Skullz (my main army blue and white Chelsea boys commanded by me Warboss Spleenstaba), Raven Guard (my all time favorite chapter as well as the least loved by GW and BL), Grey Knights/ Daemonhunters contingent (love the books and GK are my 3rd fav sm champter, 2nd is Salamanders), Tyranids (either going to do kraken or BTP swamplurker paint scheme), CSM (mostly nurgle and khorne with a little word bearer, Hellboy/BPRD, and occult stuff thrown in). I honestly don't know why I don't play Eldar either Biel Tan or Ibraesil, prlly b/c expensive pewter models, and lack of funds, and I h8 Witch Hunters, Cron, and DE. So that leaves guard, which turned out to be the biggest undertaking yet.

I haven't really felt as galvanized to play guard as I have other armies but with the release of a new codex and models like the valk. Well have thrown around a couple theme ideas I really liked the whole skitarii mechanicus theme and wanted to do that army wide with HE legs, cadian body and arms and WE hooded heads plus the FW renegade ogryn with cowls over their heads and big gears coming out of their backs. However getting the bits is just way too expensive, and doesn't look nearly as good as I first thought, however I'm still going to do 1 unit of vets with the skittarii theme and have the FW tech preist stand in for straken. Now I needed something for the army as a whole: I love death korps: the coats, the gas masks, the bad assery, the WWI style everything but their just way too expensive for a whole army (I may still have a squad are too if I get the money). So that option was out I love the lore of Catachans, the whole death world thing, but h8 everything about the models. Then I found pig Iron productions and loved the look of the of the Kolony militia heads with the helmets and gas masks, I decided to take the cadians, whose helmets i hated and thought looked way too skinny and puny compared to all other guard, and decided wait if i put those kolony militia heads on them, and bit order the packs from the heavey weapons teams they look pretty damn good and allot like Death korps of kreing (sadly without the great coats, but for that much less I'm not complaining. Now I just needed a theme.

So in a dilema I said hey wait a minute I'll make my own, but I still wnated it to fit into GW realm and not be some random *** thing I came up with as I've seen many a gay *** homegrown SM chapter and thought it was retarded. So I wanted a guard army that would be likely to fight along side my Raven Guard in lore. So I looked under the Guard section of the main rule book in the Segmentum Tempestus (Where the Raven Guard homeworld deliverance is) I norrowed it down to 3 based on proximity to Deliverance and name, Athonos- oh Athonian tunnel rats cool concept, but also taken, and I wanted something else, Calderia- eh civilized world ok, not a whole lot to work with. and finally...

Myr- PERFECT!, the closest to Deliverance, and i thought wait a minute death world ... Myr ... deathworld ... mire ... Myr=mire! A swamp deathworld perfect and something that I don't think has really been done before! Then the creative juices began to flow I got what I wanted in the end the looks of Death Korps and the deathworld lore style of Catachan.


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I thought ok wel Mire= swamp, bog, marsh, wetlands. So the whole world is going to be one big swamp rather than one big jungle like Catachan. This means a harsh environment which lead me to explaining the gas masks I think the whole chem-inhalers thing gives a persona of lowlife/junkie/criminal nor honorable/brave/loyal soldier. I thought of how the death korps wore theirs due to the unbreathable atmosphere following the 500 year long civil war and decided that the planet's atmosphere was toxic (take that catachans you think your tough at least you can breath the air on your home world!) My next thought was why are there people even on the planet at all what good is it: I came up with it being colonized for the harvesting of certain chemicals necissary for weapons, the adeptus medicae (most of our real life medison comes from thae rainforrest areas), and the adeptus mechanicus (like oil or natural gas). Then I started thinking about what types of vehicles or weapons they would more commonly use since every regiment seems to have them: Vehicles if your trying to get around in a swamp whats better than an amphibious vehicle: chimera, and traveling between out posts flyers are the easiest: valkeries. Sentinels for partols and staying dry up out of the muck )(don't like the open topped look onsentinels so I figured I'd write in that due to the toxic environment and predators even the scout sentinels have sealed compartments. Also a lot of banewolves because on a toxic swamp world there's plenty of that stuff to go around (Myr is one of the few mass producers of the substance used in banewolves in the galaxy) For clearing brush and foliage: flamers, and meltas.

Still trying to decide on a paint scheme; I like the swamp nids colors from BTP, and this one here: [img]file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/Jack/Desktop/Krieg_Guardsman_by_Wettergren_by_Yuggothian.png

so any suggestions would be helpful (note I really don't want them to look like Cadians with the paint-scheme) once I get the paint scheme I plan on putting swamp pete and mosses on the bases and tanks.


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Now for what this place actually looked like, obviously It would be one enormous swamp, the settlments would likely have to be on rockcrete stilts secured to the bedrock or on dry and high ground, so they would be few and far between or concentrated in some areas. The flora would all be overgrown with massive mangrove and other swamp trees with animals living in the roots and canopies with moss and lycans hanging from the limps, as well as forests of enormous bioluminescent mushrooms (kind of like the scenery in I believe it was Zangarmarsh in World of Warcraft). Along with many deadly carnivorous plants like the venus mantrap. With that sort of flora the fauna has to be even worse I thought of swamp animals like fish, birds, crocodilians, turtles, snakes, insects, that ilk but everything needed to be menacing and dangerous: carniverous fish like piranahs, giant slugs as long as trains, enourmous flying insects that could swoop in without being seen and carry a man off into the mist screaming as he's taken back to the nest, giant crabs and crayfish, bats as big as cars, and sloths the size of warhound scout titans. Then I came upon the briliant artwork of Luke Saunders and his creature he created in Mire and thought they would fit perfectly on this planet [url]http://lukeart.blogspot.com/2007/05/mire.html Especially the Glom, and River Skulkers. Finally I needed an end all be all of predators, something worse than the Catachan devil: going with the theme of lost and mutated tyranid I decided on the Swamp Lurker of Myr or maybe stalker (but I was going to call the gaurd the swamp stakers) Picture an enormous lictor If I was to model one i'd take the Hive tyrant body, legs and tail, and replace the head with one from a malanthrope add schything talons on top and crushing claws on bottom, it would be bigger than a hive tyrnat but not as big as a titan. What's Scarier than a lictor, a giant *** one! that has infrared vision, camophlouge, and is just as fast, it can munch a battle tank and then run off before the convoy can even react!

I'll still keep rolling with this thought train and creativity binge, I know it's been long winded, but I hope you enjoyed! I couldn't get the pics to load, if anyone could tell me how I'll be sure to do it asap cause they really do look great, thnx again.

updates:

to make them look swampy, I took the idea of using flock and aquarium plants from here: http://www.hivefleetmoloch.de/terror_from_the_black_lagoon.php

http://www.frpgames.com/new/cart.php?m=product_detail&p=44648 I think I like these better than the pig iron ones but I'll still use some of the pig iron ones, especially the officer hats

BrotherAlpharius
09-02-2009, 05:29 AM
I don't know why nobody else has replied. I love this fluff. It seems logical and totally in keeping with the wider fluff. Swamp is an area that's generally been neglected in 40k bar occasional mentions of the Drookian Fen Guard. Good luck with your project. Thanks for the link to frpgames - I might get some of those bits myself.

Whitehorn
09-02-2009, 05:41 AM
Trying to be creative and using words such as 'gay' and 'retarded' in the same breath probably isn't the best way to receive positive feedback :D

Warboss Spleenstabba
09-02-2009, 09:20 PM
@ Brother Alpharius: thank you very much and you are welcome.

@ Whitehorn- you are absolutely correct and I apologize.