GW Skaven Deathrunners (2016)

Silver Tower is a set composed of two sides - heroes and minions of Tzeetch. And then, for some reason, there is the Skaven Deathrunner. It's just a random killing machine encounter, without any particular purpose within the story, but it's kind of cool.

I am no expert of Skaven and I can't find much about Deathrunners on the internet, so I made up some fluff for myself and my campaign. Maybe you can recycle it in some way for yours.

Assassins are the elite warriors of clan Eshin - over time, they have perfected the art of stealth and murder and none is more skilled in them save, perhaps, the Dark Elf Assassins of Naggaroth. Naturally, the path of the Assassin is not easy: not only becoming an Assassin requires talent and hard work and a trail of blood among rivals, but keeping the position also demands continued success in the tasks given by the Lords of the Clan.

The price for failure among Assassins is exceedingly high: it is said that once a Skaven Assassin is given a designated victim, one of the two must die. Going back home without completing a murder is not an option.

Still, sometimes it happens: this can be the result of genuine mistake by the Assassins, deeming the victim dead, or wilful lie: the Assassin might just think its target will never be found. But if the target is indeed found alive, the shame for the whole clan is great and the punishment for the Assassin exemplar.

This is usually the Deathrunner punishment: the Assassin is imprisoned and tortured extensively, until a new victim is designated, usually an archenemy of the Skaven. Few enemies are deemed worthy of a Deathrunner, so the period of imprisonment is generally long enough for the Skaven to go crazy and build a significant deathlust for anything that moves. When the victim is finally chosen, the prisoner is carved with tattoos and runes containing warpstone, giving him unholy powers: the horrible side effects of these rituals won't have time to develop, since a Deathrunner only has one mission in his life, and it's a suicide one. The prisoner is also fed with special potions giving him strength, quickness and resistance to pain normally impossible among regular Skaven: he grows larger during this time. His torture routine is coupled with images and stories about his target, causing him to identify him as the primary cause of his condition.

When the day comes, the Deathrunner is carried in proximity of his target in a closed cart, bound and blindfolded, and then equipped for war, drugged and released: thus starts his killing-spree. Most of the time his first victims are his jailers, but soon everything that moves follows. Still, the Deathrunner has only one thought: destroy his enemy. Anything standing in his path will be killed with a brutality only known by Rat-ogres, but coupled with an unnatural martial skill. Nothing survives the Deathrunner, not those who fight it, not those who run.

Once the target is dead, mauled and bitten to pieces, the Deathrunner is either killed by enemies or by the drugs he's been fed. Sometimes his heart will explode, other times he will die of exhaustion, and others he will just kill himself in his frenzy. So ends the life of the most fearsome warrior among the Ratkin.

GW Space Marines Primaris Reivers (2017)

Warhammer 40.000 never really appealed me. It was born as "Fantasy in Space", and I always considered it a product for those who are not into Fantasy, but would rather have adventures in a Sci-Fi setting. Not that I don't like Sci-Fi, it's just that Space Elves and Space Dwarfs are not really my cup of tea.

On top of this, I disliked Space Marines. Their bulky, disproportionate figures just looked silly to me.

Everything changed in the Summer of 2017. Games Workshop launched the Primaris Space Marines, and presented them in a great White Dwarf issue, which I happily delved into while at the beach or at the hotel, when the little ones slept.

That's how I got hooked. In September I went to the local GW and bought a small box of new Space Marines just to test them. They were, to me, everything Space Marines should have been and never were until now. I surfed online, read articles and watched youtube videos to learn about the setting. By the end of the year, I had painted all three Reivers and had conceptualized three Chapters.

The Kimeliarchs

The Kimeliarchs are a refounded Chapter dating from the aftermath of  the Age of Apostasy (36th Millennium). Their precursor Chapter, the Guardians of the White Light, was a Second Foundation descendant of the Imperial Fists, but they had been involved too much with the Ecclasiarchy and were sentenced to dissolution. The survivors joined the Crusade of Atonement of Sebastian Thor and were established as Kimeliarchs, guardians of holy shrines in the system of Aeglea in the Segmentum Ultima.

Their armours are brown and white, like the bricks and marble of the Great Temple of Phanor, like the pale, pure light of the White Dwarf Aeglea and the shadows cast by those who confront it. Their device are crossed keys, for they are the keepers of sacred relics and the guardians of the holy places of the Aeglea system. Unlike most Astartes, the Kimeliarchs are deeply devoted to the Imperial Cult and worship the Emperor Saviour and St. Barnabas the Preacher, who first converted the inhabitants of Aeglea. These Space Marines are specialized in operations in inhabited worlds: they possess good intelligence and diplomacy skills, and the discipline to limit damage when confronting enemies. They are often deployed against Chaos or Xeno cults trying to erode Shrine Worlds or Hive Worlds from within.

The Mountain Spirits

The Mountain Spirits are a new Chapter, exclusively composed of Primaris Space Marines, dating from the Ultima Founding. Deriving their geneseed from Jagathai Khan, they can be considered a successor Chapter of the White Scars.

The Chapter has been stationed on Altanar, a barren, volcanic planet located in the Ultima Segmentum. Tucked between the Maelstrom and the Ork world of Golgotha, and not far from the Rift and the ruins of Prospero, Altanar and its population have survived in time only because of their dearth of resources that made the planet an unattractive stop along the routes of pirates and invaders.

The Mountain Spirits are hardy and reclusive as the planet itself, not trusting strangers and relying on fortifications to weather the Warpstorms and Ork Invasions. Their Chapter culture is rich in secret rituals and many of them are gifted psykers. Their military focus is on disguised fortifications and ambush.

Their armour is green with a red left pauldron, but psykers among them wear a dark armour with a left green pauldron. Their device is a mountain surrounded by clouds.

The Ravana Hunters

Another new Chapter from the Ultima Founding, the Ravana Hunters derive from an unspecified geneseed and take their names from their homeworld, Ravana, located in the Segmentum Pacificus. A planet of recent discovery, situated at the edge of the Imperium, Ravana is a deathworld that has never been settled before the coming of the Adeptus Astartes. Its dense jungles and barren deserts are notably inhabited by an autochtonous megafauna of invertebrates divided in countless species competing for survival.

The Astartes have not only been able to carve their own place in the deadly environment of the planet, but they also have learned to make good use of the local creatures' teeth and carapaces for the production of equipment. For example their knives are obtained from the teeth of the Gawah, a local giant mollusc and, when cut properly, are far more resistant and sharp than plasteel.

Ravana Hunters are skillful scouts and excel in guerrilla warfare. They wear black armour with red pauldrons, and their device is a Gawah conch-shell.


That's all for a start... but there's already something else on the working table. Have you started painting Primaris? Did you invent your own Chapter? Let me know in the comments!

GW Excelsior Warpriest (2016)

Age of Sigmar.

To those who were in love with the old Warhammer setting, it is anathema.

But to those who were in love with the original Warhammer setting, it's nothing new. Warhammer after 1993 sucked anyway. But let's not start on the path of the #grognard.

Age of Sigmar, we were saying. I gave it a try. And it's not bad.

It's logic, if anything. The original Warhammer setting was one of the most creative and funny fantasy settings ever, but it had a number of flaws that could not have let it survive into the 21st century, within the fold of a multinational. It was too derivative of classic fantasy, it was too British and there were way too many uncomfortable elements to make it acceptable for the big public. It was old, and it needed a retirement.

Don't flame up, my friends. You know it's true. It's gonna happen to Middle-earth, too: it's not ageless, it's a product of the 20th century and even today it is old. Ask young people.

Enter the Warhammer Fantasy reboot: Age of Sigmar. The Warhammer World was overcome by Chaos but something survived, escaped and found haven in eight worlds dominated each by a colour of magic.

Sigmar is alive, he is a God-King and rules the world of Azyr. He is now more powerful than ever and still pretty much a God of Law, but less gloomy and more cinematic. Forget Inquisition and Witch-hunters and get used to Gold-armoured Super-warriors riding lightning. Yes, it's basicly Valhalla on crack.

Among his servants, still, there is a priesthood. War-priests, to be precise.

"... and there slew they the goats, yea, and placed they the bits in little pots. Here endeth the lesson."

Get ready for oversized warhammers, holy books and parchments worn as if they were sashes. They look silly, granted, but still less silly than the old ones.

You would think with all that plate armour, he'd take a little care of his head, no? No. HE HAS TWO WARHAMMERS!

Plus, they have cynogryphs. Get it? Like hyppogryphs, but dogs instead of horses. Right. Gryph-hounds. Sigh.

Yarp!

There will be more of this. I purchased the Silver Tower set and will be taking pictures of the miniatures as I progress in painting them.

Stay tuned.

The Gamekeeper - Citadel Ranger C07 (1985)

 

In late 1985 Citadel issued one of the nicest series ever, the C07 Rangers. What was special about this range was that all the figures had been sculpted - by none other than the Perry twins - on the base of Tony Ackland's Ranger careers illustrations from the upcoming Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, published the following year.

If you have played WFRP and, as a teenager, spent whole afternoons pondering your PC's future career path while looking at Tony Ackland's drawings, you may well understand why this post is tagged #iconic.

 

This is the description of the Gamekeeper career from the rulebook:

Most Old World landowners employ Game­keepers to look after their estates, woodlands or hunting parks. Gamekeepers look on trespassers with deep and sometimes fatal suspicion. The arch­enemy of the Gamekeeper is the Poacher, who seeks to make a living by trapping or shooting animals or birds. Every Game­keeper likes to boast of his victories over these elusive and devious opponents. Poachers and Gamekeepers can be thought of as opposite sides of the same coin, and players with Gamekeeper characters of a Neutral, Evil or Chaotic Alignment may choose to be Poachers instead. Gamekeepers or Poachers may take this career a second time, taking the 'op­posite' career, following the normal pro­cedures for changing careers.

This was the true spirit of the Old World setting that, unfortunately, has largely been lost over the years to grimdark tones. Nowadays the archenemy of Gamekeepers are probably Chaos Beastmen (or Gors, as the fluff goes) and these professional are seldom seen without a trusty gunblade and a number of skulls attached to their belt. But enough of grumbling, as this post is not tagged as #grognard.

No grim trophies or fancy firearms for our Gamekeeper, but rather a bow, a quiver slung over the shoulder, a pouch, a dagger and a sword hung at the belt. He wears shoes and gaiters, breeches, a cape with lobed edges over a long tunic, and a hat with folded edges. Looking at him we know he cares about practicality and comfort, but at the same time he or his master are able to afford good quality clothes. He's fully equipped for adventure and he seems to be moving a branch aside to spy on something or someone.

In case you didn't notice, I used a different approach at painting this time. Since I had used practically all my dull greens for the different layers of clothing, my only option was to highlight with the original colour of each layer mixed with white. The final effect is less realistic but more like a painting, I find. I am not totally displeased with this approach and I might use it again in the future, especially for monochromatic colour schemes. Of course in this case the figure is not only green, but has been balanced with a range of warm browns.
 
Looking back at it, if I had to paint it again I would break the dark greens with some lighter ones to create more contrast. But this time I'll just be happy with this!