Emperors Children The Judgment on Kadeth - Dr. Ruminahui's Emperor's Children

[Volgon]

A big influence on me WAY back in the day was @Doghouse's amazing Gothic Marines (I think that's what they were called) using the Fantasy Chaos Warriors melded with Firstborn so it's always cool to see more marines built in a similar vein.

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Thanks TC, I'm always happy with the appreciation you show my conversions.  I  don't have any immediate plans to use the new capes, though I do have another melee squad that I've already built sitting in my painting queue with my raptors, my second maulerfiend and a lord discordant.  Rather, this is to future proof me so I can continue to build the army look I want going forward, even without any immediate plans - I imagine if bolter marines ever become good again I'll be building myself a squad of those.

 

Volgon, I don't remember having seen those, but given Doghouse's other work, I'm sure they were amazing.  I think it was Doghouse that did the stunning Thunder warriors a couple of years ago, though those were based on primaris models and had scratch built capes.  Anyway, if you haven't seen my previous caped marines, you can see some photos here and here - I feel I have definitely improved in their iteration over time.

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Okay, I have some movement on my chaos army that warrants an update.

 

First, I picked up the old chaos warriors box, giving me a further 34 capes for future conversions, which should hopefully do me for whatever conversions I may have in the future.

 

Second, I've (mostly) finished up my traitor guardsmen project that started with my defiler, which I've been posting the WIP progress here.  So, in addition to the defiler, I now have 3 squads of traitor guardsmen, an enforcer (with ogrynn buddy) and a rogue psycher.  Here they are:

 

Pink squad:

 

Pinker squad:

 

Pinkest squad:

 

And here they are all together with my characters

 

And finally, my entire Lost and the Damned "combat patrol" - so, the above with my defiler.  Its 525 points, though the rogue psycher's legends rules doesn't allow him to attach to traitor guard (only cultists of their various types) meaning it would need to be house ruled to let it work.

 

Incidentally, on the defiler front, I've always wanted to base it (measuring to and from it, especially for melee, is a bit of a nightmare) and bought the GW 150mm base, which is the largest base they have.  As can be seen here - not big enough.  So, if its going to get a base I'll either need to make my own or look elsewhere.

 

Finally, here they are with my maulerfiend, showing that they should look fine along side my chaos marines despite the difference in paint schemes.

 

Finally, I am back to working on my chaos marines, working on finishing some models I started painting then set aside,  Currently that means my second maulerfiend, who I now have most of the basic colours blocked in.

 

Edited October 23 by Dr_Ruminahui

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Finished painting him up - sorry for the glare.

 

 

Here it is with the little melta arms instead of the tentacles - as one might guess, they are magnetized.

 

And both my maulers together.

 

 

And all of my demon engines together - I have rather more of them than I would have thought, given that I've never gone out of my way to collect a demon engine force but just picked up the models as I wanted to paint them or when they came bundled with other models I wanted (that's how I got my second mauler and crawler).

 

[Tallarn Commander]

Dr Ruminahui, the Maulerfiend's sense of dynamism is wonderful. And when looking at both Maulerfiends together I get a strong sense of which Maulerfiend will advance onto an objective Turn 1 and which Maulerfiend will wait and pounce midgame. 

 

Edited November 9 by Tallarn Commander

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Thanks!  Hopefully I can remember in game to have the right one do the right thing.   Should be getting in a game with them on Saturday, with a bit of a weird list - I'll be fielding it, all the traitor guard stuff I painted for CtA, plus some more of my regular stuff.

 

Also thought @Tallarn Commander would want to know I almost got Grace in my photos of my demon engines (as my largest, fluffiest demon) as she surprised me by jumping up on the table as I was taking a shot, but doesn't seem to actually have made it into that shot.  Afterwards I tried to purposefully take a picture of her with them but she wasn't cooperating and was more interested in shoving her nose into my face/camera than on being photogenic.  Ah well.  

Edited November 12 by Dr_Ruminahui

[Tallarn Commander]

That sounds like classic kitty behavior. 

[Pearson73]

Those engines look ace together, as do the traitor guard, they've got so much character with all the little tweaks you've made and the blend of origin regiments.

[Volgon]

Nice stuff as usual @Dr_Ruminahui! Those maulerfiends have such dynamic poses. Never built one myself, do they have pretty decent articulation range for converting or was it a bit of work? Cool cultists, too. I've had some ideas for converting cultists floating around in my head for a while but haven't worked on any.

 

Are you excited for the Emperor's Children release? Any hopes or plans?

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Thanks, @Pearson73 and @Volgon!

 

As for maulerfiend articulation - the main problem is the pistons on the front arms.  Without modification or removal of those, there is pretty much no reposability of the kit.

 

Now, if you are happy to modify them, you can reposition the arms.  That's what I did for my first mauler - cut them off, glued the thick end on the body where it would now connect with a straight piston rod, cut off the old rod and replaced it with a longer one made from the ink tube from inside a ball point pen.  So, a bit of work, but not a big project.

 

For bigger changes in positioning, you are better just cutting them off as there is no natural looking place to put them (note, you could use this method for smaller tweeks as well).  That's what I did for my second maulerfiend.  After that, further modifications are pretty simple, such as giving it the front forgefiend legs for its back legs and changing its pose - none of which are terribly complicated, but may require some slight shaving to get the hip shields to fit or reposition the neck - and some thought to avoid blocking the tentacles.

 

If I ever do a 3rd mauler, I think I'll try to convert it to look like it is running (with a dog like stride), but I have no plans to actually get a 3rd model.

 

In terms of the new Emperor's Children, I'm a bit apprehensive.  I'm looking forward to new models, but I also like my old noise marine models - that said, I'm pretty confident I'll be able to take the new noise marine models and give them capes like my old models for a strict upgrade (provided they are regular marine size).  So, model wise I'm looking forward to it, though I don't have anything that I'm particularly excited for.  My apprehension comes from the expectation that I won't be able to field about half my models in the Emperor's Children army.  So I'll have to see whether I stay CSM and ditch my emperor's children elements (if there is no synergy for allying), play CSM with EC allies (like I am currently) or transition over to a full EC army - though the later would obviously take time as I need to paint up new units to replace the stuff I can no longer take.

 

On the plus side, as my models aren't painted strictly as 40K era EC but rather have their own iconography and colours, I won't feel terribly bad fielding them as CSM if I don't like the new EC rules and/or unit selection.

Edited November 18 by Dr_Ruminahui

[Elazar The Glorified]

On 11/18/2024 at 5:05 PM, Dr_Ruminahui said:

In terms of the new Emperor's Children, I'm a bit apprehensive.  I'm looking forward to new models, but I also like my old noise marine models - that said, I'm pretty confident I'll be able to take the new noise marine models and give them capes like my old models for a strict upgrade (provided they are regular marine size).  So, model wise I'm looking forward to it, though I don't have anything that I'm particularly excited for.  My apprehension comes from the expectation that I won't be able to field about half my models in the Emperor's Children army.  So I'll have to see whether I stay CSM and ditch my emperor's children elements (if there is no synergy for allying), play CSM with EC allies (like I am currently) or transition over to a full EC army - though the later would obviously take time as I need to paint up new units to replace the stuff I can no longer take.

 

On the plus side, as my models aren't painted strictly as 40K era EC but rather have their own iconography and colours, I won't feel terribly bad fielding them as CSM if I don't like the new EC rules and/or unit selection.

 

Totally identify with this bit! I'm very excited for new stuff but it is hard not to worry that everything you've worked on prior is going to have limited if any value in an Emperor's Children Codex. I'm hopeful from the rumours there will probably be a place for a lot of stuff with minimal rework but there are certainly some units I'm looking at that it's hard to picture will port across if we go by the other Legions...

 

Mostly though, I wanted to comment that I'm pleased to see these are still going strong after so long - took a bit of a break from B&C and it's good to see some constants remain! 

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Nice to hear your opinion on the new releases, @Elazar The Glorified and its good to see you back at B&C.  And I'm glad to provide a sense of 40K consistency with my slowly growing army.    I think I just surpassed my guard as my longest running army in terms of years spent painting it (I painted my sisters army for about 4 years, my guard for about 6 and my EC for a bit more than 7, now).  I think I recently surpassed my guard in terms of painted models, too - my IG is about 200 non-vehicle and about a dozen vehicles, while I think I now have about 205 EC non-vehicles (include my 33 traitor guard) and 14 or so vehicles.  It becomes more lopsided in favour of chaos if one also counts my other slaanneshi forces - I have 4 big knights and 4 small, plus a demon force of about 70 foot/cavalry and 3 vehicles/big demons (though, to be a fair comparison, I still have more imperials than chaos if you thrown in my sisters and marines).  Anyway, you can see links to most of that stuff in my signature if you are interested.

 

I look forward to seeing your stuff as you share it here - so please do.  Hopefully you can stick around. 

 

@Volgon, one thing I forgot to mention regarding maulerfiend possibility is that any easy repositioning of the arms and legs (even with dealing with the piston problem) is purely rotational - so you can rotate them around front-bottom-back-top but can't really tilt them inwards and outwards without removing or reshaping the pegs/blocks that seat the limbs into the torso.  And, even if you did, with the provided base there isn't much room to splay the limbs in this manner and you would likely run into a lot of trouble getting the hip/shoulder armour on if you did.  So, in other words, its actually a pretty static model, but fortunately relatively small changes can  make a marked improvement to its appearance.

Edited November 23 by Dr_Ruminahui

[Tallarn Commander]

Wow! Your Chaos has finally surpassed your IG. Congratulations! My 6 Chaos armies have yet to surpassed my Tallarn IG army. But they are gaining.

 

Amen about the Maulerfiend! It is a static model indeed. I spent a great deal of time last month trying to pose it with an arm bent backwards so as if to build up momentum for a strike. I eventually gave up. Sigh.

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Thanks!  The 140 or so mortals in my chaos forces certainly help (110-ish cultists plus traitor guard), though sadly my 65 or so autogun cultists are now legends only, of which I am most bummed about my 26 ex-genestealer cultist conversions.

 

Edit:  After I got home and checked my shelves, turns out my count was off - I only have 74 painted cultists (rather than 110), of which 49 are now legended.  That said, I forgot to count my 10 7th ed chosen and a couple of characters... so I've redone my math above to account for that.

Edited November 23 by Dr_Ruminahui

[Metzombie]

On 11/22/2024 at 8:34 PM, Dr_Ruminahui said:

though sadly my 65 or so autogun cultists are now legends only

You could also see it as a promotion to "Traitor Guardsmen". This way you can still play them(minus anyone equiped with a heavy stubber them, i guess?)

[Dr_Ruminahui]

That's true, and I've done that for two games so far before I painted my actual traitor guardsmen.  Between those, the genestealer ones and the autogun cultists from the old box sets, I have more than enough to field 6x traitor guardsmen squads should I ever have the inclination to do so (and want to play the mortal focused detachment).  But yeah, the loss of heavy stubbers hurts (though luckily I painted up enough squaddies to field them without support weapons, which is why my "squads" have 13 models each), though a flamer isn't what I would prefer to give them.  If I were to seriously go this route, I would probably consider converting or adding another model to give them a plasma or melta option.

 

That said, I'm more likely to just keep them on the shelf for now and just break them out if my ork playing friend wants to play with legends - he's got a bunch of the 2nd edition ork buggies and the like that he couldn't otherwise field.  I play so rarely that I don't really need to change up lists for variety, other than as I do naturally to make sure I play my most recently painted stuff.

 

I'm mostly just salty because I really like how the squads turned out, and given my painting speed, despite having finished the more recent squad over a year ago, I consider them some of my recently painted stuff.  Ah well, just my habit of painting things 2-3 years after they were actually good coming back to bite me.   Speaking of which, after I finish some terrain, my Lord Discordant is next in the queue to be finished. 

[Special Officer Doofy]

Dr. Ruminahui, GW is going to have a hard time topping your Noise Marines. Whenever someone I know would talk about Noise Marines or EC in general the past few years I always come back to this thread to show them your converted marines with the sigmar/fantasy bits. 

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Thanks Doofy!

 

From my perspective, the new noise marine models are actually one of the few parts of the EC codex that I'm not apprehensive about - I'm sure they will be very nice, and in any event if they are regular marine size I'll be giving them capes just like my old models (I bought a box of warriors with the Old World releases so I have 34 capes for just that purpose).  What I'm more worried about is straddling the line between my new army and using the new stuff - as mentioned above, I may continue as CSM with EC allies rather than go pure EC.

 

As a side note, I've also bought a box of the AoS chaos warriors but have yet to use any of their capes - they are a lot more dynamic, but otherwise I prefer the old ones - the AoS ones aren't as many and aren't as nice IMHO (they don't all have fur, there is one with a shield on the back).  I may end up using them for characters or if I ever do a squad of chosen, but for now they sit in their box.

[Special Officer Doofy]

The good news about having a smaller release is they (EC) should maintain access to more CSM units I would think. If for some reason they do add the Daemons to the cult codex, you have a very sizable Slaanesh collection too. I'm sure you'll find a way to have fun with your models regardless of which codex you use.

[LSM]

On 11/25/2024 at 5:16 PM, Special Officer Doofy said:

The good news about having a smaller release is they (EC) should maintain access to more CSM units I would think...

 

(Fingers crossed, though the World Eater release was tiny and they still lost access to ~60% of stuff from Codex: Chaos Space Marines. Including things that should have been a cinch to keep.)

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Yeah, that's my fear too, @LSM - though, if that happens I'll continue playing as CSM with EC allies, though I suspect there will be less synergy than now.

 

Has my first game in since the spring last WE and had a lot of fun.  My list was 1500 points renegade raiders:

• MoE warlord with the extra CP enhancement  + sorcerer + 10 legionairies with 2x hvy melee and 2x plasma pistol in a rhino with 2x bolters and havoc
• 3x traitor guard with sniper rifle, grenade launcher, and plasma gun, one of which also had a traitor enforcer and orgryn buddy
• 1x cultist mob of 20 + rogue psycher
• Defiler
• 2x maulerfiends, both with lasher tendrils
• 3x biker squads of 3, one with 2x plasma, one with 2x melta and one with 2x flamers, all with power fist on champ and chainswords on other.

Basically, the list was primarily comprised of stuff that I had painted recently + bikes to try to make the best use of the renegade raiders stratagems.  Spoiler - I didn't.

 

Played against an ork mob list with 3x 20 boy squads (1 in a battle wagon with warboss, 2 on foot (1 with weird boy, 1 with warboss), 10x burnas in a truck, 5 meganobs +megamech on foot, 6x deathcoptas, 5x lootas.

 

We played Leviathan missions/cards with tactical (so random) secondaries.  Despite getting trounced on victory points (he doubled me, as 40-something to 20-something) it was a lot of fun - definitely a "two medieval armies running at each other screaming" type game.  I did forget entirely about Dark Pacts all game, which really hurt for the traitor guard.  He has a stratagem that lets a unit move when targeted, even into engagement range that he used twice - first time he used it to get a big mob in which my defiler, giving it -1 to hit and denying some of the shooting from my bikes.  The second time it was less impactful, as he piled into my legionairies who all had pistols and weren't really affected, though it deny me the charge letting him attack first - fortunately he didn't do too much damage letting me almost wipe his unit in return.  All in all, a good stratagem that works better than it might look on paper.

 

Most memorable moment of the game was when there was a big scrum involving my 2 maulerfiends, his burnas, one of his foot ork squads, a truck and his battlewagon.  My first maulerfiend already having killed the truck and some boys, the second kills the battlewagon which explodes and exactly takes out the other one which was on 4 wounds - on plus side, it only did only 1-2 on itself, 6 on the meganobs and then another 1-2 on the ork mob.

 

Take aways:

• Not a real fan of traitor guard - they are expensive cultists with slightly better guns and worse special rules.  Given one takes cultists for their sticky objectives and not their guns, to me a strict downgrade.  Plus, it didn't help that I forgot about dark pacts, as this is a unit that really benefits from lethal hits.  As for the enforcer's free overwatch at the expense of a model, I think I did that 4 times (so 4 dead traitors) for a grand total of 1 ork boy killed - so definitely not worth it.  I'll probably give them one more game before relegating them to my shelf.
• Also underwhelmed by their sniper rifles - though that was in large part due to my failure to wound.  Although I'm not usually a fan of flamers, I think they might be a good replacement as they get you around their bad BS plus are really good for overwatch.  That said, I can't see me wanting to field the squad enough for me to convert models over to flamers.
• I continue to love the defiler, even when it gets picked on and swarmed by orks.  Its melee really isn't configured to handle hordes, though at least this edition it can still shoot out of combat.
• This is the first game where I both got to take advantage of the special rules regarding enemies on objectives (both the better AP and buff to legionairies) and remembered to do so.  Being orks, the first wasn't as big of an effect (though did let some wounds through on his deathcoptas that wouldn't have otherwise) but did turn my legionairies plus MoE (whose rules I also remembered to use for the first time) into a real blender.  I can see why they are go tos for tourney lists - even more so, I imagine, if one remembers dark pacts.
• Bikes are okay, though I feel that I deployed mine poorly - rather than ranging into the enemy's back zone, they kind of got tied up in mine.  As well, I think the optimal loadout has changed - the 2x meltagun squad is of limited utility, while the 2x flamer unit, on the other had, is improved - I can see the use of hiding one among your other units to use for overwatch.  For all of them, though, I think minimum squad sizes are the way to go and I never was in a position where I found the raiders stratagems for them were the best use of my CP.

 

My cat Grace did show up mid game and jumped on the table wanting affection - which was bit of an issue, as she has a "drive by" petting style where she comes close for pets, then moves away to rub against something else - in this case, that was the battle field terrain, displacing our victory point and CP dice and some models.  Nothing that wasn't remediable, though. 

Edited December 4 by Dr_Ruminahui

[Tallarn Commander]

Sounds like you all (and Grace) had fun.

 

Yes, I've found my bikes are no longer there to do anything to the enemy. They are for capping objectives as squads of 3 and for doing actions. Sigh, they used to be a more aggressive unit in earlier editions.

 

[EmprahsStrongestGuardsman]

I haven't played 40k since 4th or 5th, though I do keep track of the rules somewhat via youtube. Winters and the rest. It's definitely changed a lot.

The 3.5 chaos codex was so characterful for EC, even just in simple ways. Sacred Number is 6, so take squads of 6 and you get a free Aspiring Champion upgrade. Noise Marines are Troops, Sonic Weapons on vehicles, etc. 

It'd be so easy for them to do stuff like that. 

 

I'm expecting Exalted Sixbound though...

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Not sure Grace had fun - I think she was annoyed at us for eventually picking her off the table and not giving her as much attention as she might have wanted in the manner she wanted.  Such is the life of a pampered cat.

 

I've never had much luck with bikes, though I pretty much only played them this once and a fair bit in early 8th.  I don't think they are horrible, but I do think they are far better as objective grabbers than anything else.

 

Been painting up terrain, so haven't gotten any painting on my EC done these days.  That said, I have done some conversion - basically I turned this:

 

 

Into this:

 

 

They are for my 2nd melee legionaires squad that I had already built but decided to optimize before painting - I had stolen their heavy melee weapon guy for my other legionaires squad, so he needed replacing, and then I swapped the flamer and melta (okay choices for 9th ed when I built it, not so great now) for a chain and a las cannon.  All three are shadowspear models that I had built a while back - the chaincannon was  a previous conversion using the barrels from one of the obliterators I converted a couple of years ago, done at that time.

Edited December 8 by Dr_Ruminahui