Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Armies on Parade

So thinking about doing an Armies on Parade and I got blown away by the black library // harlequin scene done up by some mad genius. Way beyond my painting capabilities- all those free hand curve sided squares- nope, not doing that. At best, I can do a bad version of John Blanche: dirty, grimy, scary.

So playing to my strengths, and what I like to field, and following my nose from the slightly competitive int the pure fluffy, I'm thinking of an army based on the "House of Ash and Dust", dark heresy module from "Disciples of Dark Gods". The 2 rooms depicted in the scene- sort of back to back would be the great hall with the Haarlock's crypt as the wall and the auditorium where the auction is held. These rooms are not exactly adjacent in the "map" provided to run it but they are the places where most of the combat takes place... think of it as a stage... a bit of artistic license with scale and positioning to make it all fit.

The "furniture" is pretty epic. Black mausoleum carved with blasted spaceships and burning planets, aged house gun servitor, all brass, cogs and decrepit flesh, saint bearing brazier of volcanic fire aloft.

Maybe a PDF gun rack with the poor planetary defence mooks pulling their shoddy lasguns out.

The auditorium is statues, bookcases, maybe a void shield generator, display cases, a big black cat statue

Some of these items are an ageis defence line, others are objective markers, maybe 2 might be Archeotech artefacts as per the main 6th ed rules.

Will all this fit on a 24" by 24" board? Good question.

The army lit I have compiled represents the main characters in the module. Would they fight as allies of convenience against an outside force like dark eldar or space marines raiding in force? Maybe. the biggest, maybe not is the  Slaught Overseer. He's likely to kill anything within arms length.

The rest certainly would until it looked like there was a clear winner..or they worked out just what the rest of the combatants were doing.

Greel- head mourner + the Sorrowful guild. Big dude with scythe and cultists. (typhus- bit over spec but hey, plague zombies to represent panicked insanity or just normal cultists)
Provost Bland, Planetary Defence Force, Menials, Servitors (imperial guard platoon and cultists with guns)
The Gilded Widow- clockwork bound daemonic machine seeking blood (maulerfiend)
The Children of the Kingdom. Not quite humanoid ghouls. (plague zombies)
The last Haarlock- tough rogue trader//bounty hunter dude with tricks up his sleeve (guardsman marbo)
Inquisitor and hench-folk (Commissar, priest, engi-seer and platoon command squad)
Any artefacts that decide to come out and play- for example the Halo Device could be a fully manifest sci-fi cthulu/necronesque vampire with wings (winged daemon prince)
Slaught Overseer- worm that walks in human skin (could make it a chaos spawn with extra toughness to represent.. it's toughness and effective mindlessness)
Captain Rubio and his hangers on. More imperial guard or cultist level mooks. (bah- more cultists)

Anyway, its like 70 guys. Also having trouble fitting on a 2ft by 2ft board.