Unrelenting Despair - Night Lords Fellblade

[Seregon]

I've started this project as my october (assembly) and november (painting) goal over at The Independent Characters forum for their Hobby Challenge, but thought it could be fun to extract it into a separate thread on a different forum as well.

There are many choices on forums to post on, but I decided on this one for two simple reasons:
1. Machinator frequents here, and since I'm using a boatload of his resin stuff to make this one, I thought I'd make it easy for him to check in on it.
2. It's not as apocalyptically busy in here, so I'm less likely to drown in other peoples threads as I would've been in say Warseer.

With that, it's time to present my project.

Ever since I got hold of the Fly Lords' "Lords of Battle" pdf, as well as by reading comments on the "Fellblades of Renown" thread, I've been irked the wrong way by the seemingly general consensus that Night Lords shouldn't have a Fellblade of their own.
Well, I disagree with that (shocking, I know!) and base the use of mine on the old Index Astartes article where the Night Lords simply don't understand what the word "moderate" mean. I simply love the fact that they orbital bombard an entire continent to wipe out a slaanesh cult on a part of a small island.

That thought has always followed me while doing my Night Lords and what better way of adding a centerpiece to my (pre-)heresy era Night Lords than a Fellblade.

One last thing. All resin pieces are from Machinator's e-bay store: [URL="http://stores.ebay.com/Blood-and-Skulls-Industry"]http://stores.ebay.com/Blood-and-Skulls-Industry[/URL] and the Fellblade Cannon and engine plate is commission work from him as well.

Experimental rules for the Unrelenting Despair can be found here: [URL="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10235380/40k/Fellblade%20Destructor.pdf"]Fellblade Destructor[/URL]

Thus we begin...

[Seregon]

Some pictures:

Several bags of plastic and resin goodness



Making way for the new turret plate turned out to be quite a bother when you only have a few exacto-blades to work with. After a bit of cursing and wishing for various kinds of power tools, success at last.



Dryfitting most of the stuff together. This beast will require a bit of thinking so I don't accidentally glue things together before considering the position of all planned magnets and possible upgrades.

[Machinator]

Looking good Seregon!

Yeah, I'll admit I too jumped on the "Night Lords can't have Fellblades" bandwagon and am glad you're proving me wrong. I can't wait to see what you do with your version.

Good luck!

[Proximus]

Great project yo`ve got there, I`ll be watching this with great interest. With machinators resin parts, this holds huge potential. Being a Night Lords player myself, I might steal some good ideas here and use them in a very similar project in a few months... in fact I´ve been toying withthat idea for some time now. Will you attach plastic Balrog wings to the main turret just for deco? That`s what I`d do.

Plus, my two cents on the topic of "Night Lords can`t have fellblades":

Yes, they can. The mechanicum provided all kinds of equipment to all the legions before the Great Crusade had even begun (because even Space Marines would have had a hard time conquering the galaxy using only their bare fists).
This means that every legion had a standard pool of vehicles before they found their respective primarch and started to specialize in certain ways of warfare. During the crusade, each legion would start to request more of the equipment that fits their taste, so the White Scars would get more bikes, Iron Warriors would get more tanks, Night Lords more Jump Packs, thus adapting their inventory to their preferred style of warfare.

The Night Lords may prefer and excel in all the hit-and-run terror stuff, but Ì imagine they can`t always choose in which way to fight. Sometimes, they will have to take part in full frontal assaults or even sieges. Good thing they still have these ancient super-heavy tanks standing around somewhere...

[Seregon]

Will you attach plastic Balrog wings to the main turret just for deco?

In one word: No.

If there's something you won't see in my army it's winged helmets or any other excessive use of wings. I'm not even using that many skulls on them. The army is heresy-era in style without the usually tactless iconography of death everywhere. The elite units may get a few skulls hanging from their "belts", but otherwise they don't need that kind of stuff to show they mean business.
I'm also fairly sure that you'd need to be a converter on a golden daemon level to manage to pull off adding wings to vehicles.

Now for some progress..

It's still mostly dryfitted, but all turrets have been magnetized (it took 41 magnets in total for the 4 turrets).
Next thing to do is to add some plasticard to where the tracks will go, check for a good way to magnetize the sponsons and armour plates and start doing the Legion iconography on the front plate and the two remaining side armour plates. I'll also need to fill in the holes where the turret viewports usually go and add some rivets to the edges.

[Xenith]

Any reasons for the choice in weaponry?

[Seregon]

It's mainly the throwback from the old Index Astartes that subtlety and finesse are for people who can't, or don't have the guts, to do just what's needed of them. Overwhelming force and complete destruction is how the Night Lords (used to) roll, so the power and number of shots you get from autocannons make them very fitting in my mind.

Yes, they can do finesse as well, but often it just isn't needed when you can just as easily smash the enemy to a pulp with a decisive first strike and then just mop up the leftovers.

[Meph]

Cool, always a big fan of the Fellblades I am.