Mandragola's Crimson Fists

[01RTB01]

I'm intrigued by how your list does. It's essentially what I'd been looking to run but with a bolt inceptor squad and some bolt aggressors too for some variety.

 

Never seen your blog before but your fists are inspirational and stunning. With 10 days to GT, have you time to finish?!

 

Best of luck sir and look forward to seeing your progress

[Mandragola]

Thanks. I'm glad you like my stuff. 

 

I've had another think about the list. I didn't like how spammy it was, and I think it lacked a bit of functionality too. 

 

By downgrading a unit of intercessors to scouts, and some suppressors to scout bikers, I've been able to upgrade my Chaplain to a Librarian and some Eliminators to a Stalker. I think that the option to deny the witch and cast Null Zone will really help. I'll make this guy a Chief Librarian and probably give him the armour indominatus to keep him safe. Might take the warlord trait to give him access to the Fists powers, so he can cast Fortify on people for some extra hp.

 

I think this is probably better. The stalker gives me access to a great strat, and it's also useful to have a T8 vehicle I can park on objectives. The scout bikers are very fast and actually have respectable dakka - 16 shots at 24" and 6 more shotgun attacks up close - though how the sergeant fires a shotgun and storm bolter while riding a motorbike is something of a mystery to me!

 

Some other good news is that I think this will require less work. I've already got the Librarian, the scouts are sort of there (but have shotguns) and so on. The intercessor squads exist too, and I'll just have to give them new magazines rather than re-number everyone. I've added notes below to the state all these guys are in.

 

 

Pedro Kantor                     150        Done

                                                           

Primaris Lieutenant                        69           Built

               Master-crafted Stalker Bolt Rifle              

                                            

Primaris Librarian                            98           Done

               Force Sword                     

                             

5 Intercessors                   86           Done, need to change magazines

               Auxiliary Grenade Launcher                       

               Chainsword                       

               Stalker Bolt Rifles                           

                                            

5 Intercessors                   86           Done, need to change magazines

               Auxiliary Grenade Launcher                       

               Chainsword                       

               Stalker Bolt Rifles                           

                                            

5 Intercessors                   86           Done, need to change magazines

               Auxiliary Grenade Launcher                       

               Chainsword                       

               Stalker Bolt Rifles                           

                                            

5 Scouts                              57           Have a unit with shotguns…

               Chainsword                       

               Storm Bolter                    

               Bolt Guns                           

                                            

5 Infiltrators                      110        Painting in progress

                                                                                         

5 Infiltrators                      110        Painting in progress

                                                                          

Invictor Tactical Warsuit                              136        Built

               Twin Ironhail Autocannon                          

               Fragstorm Grenade Launcher                    

               Two Ironstorm Heavy Stubbers                 

               Heavy Bolter                    

                                            

Invictor Tactical Warsuit                              136        Almost built

               Twin Ironhail Autocannon                          

               Fragstorm Grenade Launcher                    

               Two Ironstorm Heavy Stubbers                 

               Heavy Bolter                    

                                            

Invictor Tactical Warsuit                              136        Almost built

               Twin Ironhail Autocannon                          

               Fragstorm Grenade Launcher                    

               Two Ironstorm Heavy Stubbers                 

               Heavy Bolter                    

                                            

3 Suppressors                    90           In progress

               Accelerator Autocannon                             

               Grav Chutes                      

                                            

3 Suppressors                    90           Built

               Accelerator Autocannon                             

               Grav Chutes                      

                                            

3 Scout Bikers                   71           Battle ready

               3 Twin Bolt guns                             

               Storm Bolter                    

                                            

3 Eliminators                     72           In progress

               Bolt Sniper Rifles                            

               Camo Cloaks                    

                                            

3 Eliminators                     72           In progress

               Bolt Sniper Rifles                            

               Camo Cloaks                    

                                            

Stalker                  95           Built

               Two Icarus Stormcannon              

[01RTB01]

Looks good :D

 

How do you find the stalkers?

 

I'm sure that fist warsuits will do some serious work with the devastator doctrine.

 

 

As for the bike sergeant - practice?... Ninja?... Offspring of Chuck Norris?... Regardless, he's impressive!

[Mandragola]

Which stalkers do you mean, the tank or the bolt rifle? :)

 

I was doing some adding up in my head. The extra hit on a 6 Fists get compensates exactly for the -1 to hit modifier for moving and firing. So it's kind of equivalent to Iron Hands CT for stalker rifles, except it also does 3 damage on vehicles. You don't get to reroll 1s all the time, but I have Pedro to help with that.

 

To be honest though, I haven't fielded either of these units. I desperately need to get some practice games in. First I need to build the army though. I imagine I could do better at tournaments if I played any games not at tournaments. I'm actually enjoying AT more than 40k at the moment, but I do enjoy a competition now and then.

[Mandragola]

I'm making relatively good progress on my infiltrators. I'd say these guys are about 80% done now.

 

 

I got bored of painting these guys and instead painted up the stalker. Its nearly there, but needs an edge highlight still. My vehicles are basically just blue and metal, though there's a lot of blue to do.

 

 

The next few days are going to be extremely busy, but I think I'm getting there. I'll try to get as much as possible done on the Invictors tomorrow.

[Mandragola]

Ok today's progress has been somewhat frustrating, but necessary. I've gone through my scouts and intercessors to make sure they've all got the right guns. The scouts now have bolters and the intercessors have stalker bolt guns. I also finally built the autocannons for the Invictors and pushed those on - but haven't glued them. I also did a little bit of repair work to my scout bikers, replacing a broken aerial and adding on some scopes from hellblasters to the front, where it looked needed.

 

So now I've got a fully built army. That's a good milestone. It lets me put all my models on a table and take a picture of them, like this:

 

 

This reveals that I've got a hell of a lot more painting to do! But at least the glue won't be needed any more, unless I drop stuff. Hopefully this lot will all look a lot better in a few days time.

[Kolgrim DeathHowl]

Looks great so far!!

[Mandragola]

Looks great so far!!

 

Thanks. Progress is being made, at least, though I remain scared at how much more I need to do.

 

More progress today. I've done a little bit to my troops, but mostly been working on the Suppressors and Invictors.

 

The suppressors are now on their stands, and the second unit has been base-coated and inked. I've done the same to my lieutenant.

 

 

But the bigger task today was these guys, my Invictors. These have also been base-coated and inked, meaning that now every model in my army is at least somewhat painted. 

 

 

Since taking that I've gone through and done the first layer of highlighting on one of them. That was pretty quick actually. The blue areas are quite large but don't cover as much of the model as all that. Edge highlights will probably take longer.

 

I've been giving a bit of thought to how I should paint my Invictors. Specifically, how much red to give them and whether the fists should be red. I give my Dreadnoughts red fists but I don't think I'll do that for these guys. The reasoning is that these things are vehicles, not suits of armour, so they don't get the honour that the red fist somehow signifies - in my version of the fluff. A Dreadnought *is* a Crimson Fist, but an Invictor is just a vehicle that a guy is driving, I think.

 

Similarly my scouts have blue hands apart from the Sergeant, and all my Sergeants have two red hands instead of just a red left hand, like the normal guys have. The scouts aren't yet true Crimson Fists.

 

The other thing I've decided is that the guys driving these Invictors are a 3-man squad, not unlike the many other 3-man squads I've got. So I'll paint them (if I get round to it) as such. They'll have a squad number, one of them will be a Sergeant and so on. They'll have a squad marking (probably close support - not elite) on the right shoulder and a number too. I think that could be quite a cool thing. It could partially justify the spamminess of the army, too.

[Mandragola]

Hmm, I see it's a long time since I posted here. I did finish my army for the tournament. Did pretty well at it too, but found the play style not awesome. If I went first I basically hosed my opponent but there were games where the same would have happened to me if they got first turn. The work we all put into our armies doesn't seem worth it if that happens.

 

So I've taken a bit of a break from 40k, until now with 9th edition. I'm still on the fence about 9th but I'm going to give it a go.

 

I've been assembling the Indomitus stuff. I vaguely considered starting a new army of something like White Scars, as the box contents is extremely melee-focused, but I think I'll just add these to my Crimson Fists.

 

Most of the guys are being built straight out of the box, but one exception is the Stormcast Etern Judiciar. I'm not at all a fan of the head he comes with, so I've replaced it with one from a 30k Templar Brethren. I'm quite pleased with the effect. I think it's cool to have this guy as a throw back to the crusading 7th Legion, even if he's kind of an exception to the rest of my more pragmatic Crimson Fists.

 

 

I do wonder what colour to paint his gloves though. Red leather might seem a bit of a kink thing.

[Brother Dallo]

That head swap works really well on the Judiciar.

 

Looking forward to seeing him painted.

 

Dallo

[Lucerne]

Yeah I have a feeling that won't even look like a kitbash when painted.

[Sagentus]

That would make for an amazing looking emperors champ!! 

[Mandragola]

Thanks guys. Progress continues on building the Indomitus set. Just the captain and 5 assault intercessors to go. I think I'm going to swap over the arms of these guys with a box of normal intercessors I've got, to make a squad of guys with auto rifles advancing. That might take a little longer than the rest.

 

It probably goes without saying, but the models in this box really are fantastic. I actually really like the necrons too. The warriors are actually some of my favourites - they've managed to achieve the look of a shambling zombie horde, which is awesome. Then their pristine overlords stood next to them creates a really cool aesthetic for the army - kind of like peasants or zombies being herded into battle. I'll probably paint a few up for fun at some point. No idea if that will become an army. If it did, I quite like the idea of going for 120 warriors, mainly to confound the idea that hordes can't work and also because I've never done a horde and I think these could be relatively fast to paint.

 

In all honesty, I don't know if much of the Indomitus set is going to make it into my army full time. The Eradicators seem to be good enough to run even though there's nothing particularly great about using them as Crimson Fists (compared to say Salamanders or White Scars). Outriders might be good for scoring objectives, but it is a problem that they're not infantry and Inceptors might be more useful for Fists. There are versions of my list in which maybe bladeguard could be good. I do really like that they've given us a Captain and Lieutenant with awesome wargear. However the captain isn't Pedro and I'm a bit tempted to take the eye of Hypnoth on something like a Librarian instead of a LT. The Judiciar is definitely looking useful though as I really like to counter-punch and he's perfect for messing up a charging enemy. So he might make it to the paint first.

[Alcyon]

Subbed, finally took a look at the link in your sig, love the modelling, love the drybrush blue look of the Stalker. 

[Mandragola]

Thanks. I like how the stalker came out. I should really take some photos of the army in its finished state, as I was quite pleased with it.

 

I did get round to building a squad of my Indomitus assault marines with guns. They've mostly come out quite well I think.

 

 

I think the thunder hammer guy looks great but annoyingly in the new codex he probably isn't a good pick. My best option is probably to take his bolter away and make him back into an assualt intercessor. A Thunder hammer is an ok option for them with the fight twice strat, though 20 points is an awful lot to pay.

 

I haven't been working on this army at all lately. I wanted to see what the new codex brought so I've been painting titans and knights for AT and a few planes for AI. Turns out I don't really like AI as a game unfortunately, so that wasn't time very well spent. Oh well.

 

Now that the book is out I've been reading it and all the various supplements on the app. I'm not too sure what's good now, but Redemptors do look like they might be pretty solid. I've got one of those built and a second on its sprues, so I think I'll put that together. Might actually get myself a third one eventually. They look like a good option to hang around Pedro.

 

I've got a load of grey plastic right now and a few models that are built and just undercoated. This gives me the option of assembling a second army of marines - maybe with a different play style. Ravenguard and Blood Angels are the two options I'm mainly considering. 

 

I bought three repulsor executioners back when they came out. So far they're all built and undercoated... and useless. Maybe I'll paint up one of them for this army and leave the others for something else. They'd be a bit better as Ravenguard as they'd at least get cover bonuses at range. I can't see myself using them any time soon though.

[Bjorn Firewalker]

I like your Marines' dynamic poses.

[Mandragola]

Did a bit of work today. I've had a second Redemptor on its sprues for a year or two, that came in the Imperial Fist big box. Finally put it together today. These things take a lot of work to assemble!

 

I also built the plasma gun for its friend, which I got basecoated but not finished way back when. So here they are now.

 

 

I've got this idea that these guys could be good for my Fists in 9th. Honestly not a huge amount of stuff is good now. The plasma guns on these do at least get to use Legacy of Dorn and they're core, so in theory I could tell them to be in Devastator Doctrine later on. It's pretty likely I'll use three of these things in quite a lot of games.

 

Meanwhile I've still got a lot of other grey plastic. I'm thinking quite hard about doing a Ravenguard army with it, to have a completely different play style.

[Mandragola]

I've been doing a lot of thinking recently about how a 9th edition army should look for my Fists. The main idea is to come up with an answer to the question: "why would you play Crimson Fists?"

 

Now that I've seen previews of all the IA books it's fairly clear that they don't offer much help, competitively. The Leviathan looked like it might be good but lacking the Core keyword takes it out of contention, in my opinion. It would be pretty great if you could use the strat to keep it in devastator doctrine, but you can't. Oh well.

 

Fortunately, I think Redemptors are pretty great for Fists. I'm working on the two above and will pick up a third soon. They're sold out in most places, annoyingly. There's no rush, as the UK is back in lockdown and there's no prospect of playing any games soon.

 

Last night I ordered three invaders and a box of inceptors. Those will be the next things I work on. The invaders will need quite a lot of conversion work because I don't want three identical monoposed buggies. I think I'll swap the crew out almost completely and put vanguard guys in there instead, with a bunch of stowage and stuff. I'd like them to look like a recon patrol, hopefully with a lot more character than they have out of the box. Annoyingly, the gunner's feet are moulded on the floor in the back. That'll be a bit of a pain to alter.

 

Edit: just remembered that the ATVs aren't Core. Damn it! That massively reduces their power, and the order's just been dispached. Should have paid more attention.

Edited November 4, 2020 by Mandragola

[Mandragola]

I'm doing kind of a fun project (for me at least) - turning an invader ATV into an attack bike.

 

Attack bikes are pretty cool I think, and useful in t he game, but their model is ancient and doesn't fit in at all with my Primaris force. I've previously converted up some scout bikes and scouts using Reivers though and I'm generally up for trying to make Firstborn units out of Primaris ones.

 

The invader has twice as many wounds as an attack bike though, so my version needs to look significantly smaller. It should also have all the correct equipment, so the multimelta the ATV comes with is good, but I'll need something that looks like a set of twin bolters.

 

So it'll be quite a big job on a small mini. And hopefully I'll be able to do it three times to make a full unit. For now, I'm just working on one.

 

There are quite a lot of things I haven't yet figured out. Probably the biggest is whether it should have one or two crew. There's a case for just having one Primaris crewman, given that it has roughly the same stats as an outrider. I could potentially make some sort of a turret for the melta and sit it behind the driver instead of having a gunner operate it. However, an actual gunner would probably look cooler, which is important. I can pose them doing interesting stuff, to make the model less static.

 

The crew are going to be Vanguard marines, with infiltrator helmets but not omni-scramblers. I see these guys as some sort of long range patrol unit. 

 

Here's how I've got on so far.

 

I started out making the driver out of an infiltrator. Arms still need to be made, once I can see what I'm attaching the handle bars to, but I wanted to have his basic size and shape to work around.

 

 

Then I did a lot of work with a saw to cut down pieces. Here I am cutting out the old pilot. I'll keep those legs in case I feel like sticking him in a storm talon or something.

 

 

Here's a dry fit with the sides of the ATV stuck on. This would have made life relatively easy. I thought it was probably too close to the original though.

 

 

So I decided to go for a trike design instead. This required more cutting to get various pieces to fit together.

 

 

 

Here's where I'm up to now. I've got a trike that's significantly narrower than the invader, though I haven't managed to make it shorter. Going down to three wheels has made it quite a lot less substantial though, which is good.

 

 

There's quite a lot still to figure out. I think I know more or less how I want the front of the vehicle to look. It'll have the spare bits of hull side added on to make the front wheel look a bit like the one on the outriders. I then need to fill in a load of gaps with plasticard and (where possible) gubbins from the ATV. Then the gunner and weapons, and things should be more or less done.

 

The gunner's pose is still a bit of a question mark. I think the engine needs to be behind the driver but that's also where the gunner goes. I guess he could be sat on top of it. The engine doesn't need to be huge but there needs to be a space where it could conceivably be.

[Red_Shift]

Years ago I did something similar with the old bike kit. IIRC I ended up building a little platform out of the back for the gunner to stand on. I think your biggest challenge will be spacing out the gunner. The problem with the gw buggy kit imo is that the gun looks like it's going to completely deafen/blind the driver with muzzle flare and noise. Good luck with the project and I'll watch with interest!

[Mandragola]

Thanks for that. Here's sort of an update. I did some work on this thing last night, mainly working out how the front could fit together. This required quite a bit of surgery to various pieces of invader hull, which have been sawn up and stuck back together to form a sort of cowling around the front wheel. Here's how it looks right now.

 

 

I'm pleased with the shapes I've been able to make, but I'm not really happy with the overall feel of the thing at this point. It's just a bit too chonky, basically. The cowling around the front wheel is too wide and the blocky sides don't work for me.

 

So I'm going to take it apart again a bit and try to cut out some of this weight. I think I can improve on what I've got here to make something that looks a lot lighter than this iteration.

[Mandragola]

And here we go, the stripped down version minus a lot of bulk on the sides. Much happier with it now.

 

 

There's a bit still to resolve around the sides and then I can get to work on the gunner.

 

One slightly annoying issue is that infiltrator helmets have these big aerials on, and I don't want it to clash with the gun. I'll figure something out.

 

C+C very welcome.

[Jukkiz]

you could add tiny spacer under gunners place so they stand abit higher with gun so drivers antennas don´t rub on them

[Mandragola]

I think that’s good advice. You probably wouldn’t want a multimelta going off right next to your head anyway, so if the aerial keeps it away that’s probably a good thing.

 

This does mean raising the height of the thing a fair bit though. An attack bike is very close to the ground and this really won’t be if the gun has to fire over the driver’s head. Not sure whether that’s really a problem.

 

It would still be possible to go for an asymmetric layout with the gunner to the side of the driver. I’d have to change how the rear wheels are laid out but it might work. Or it might look really bizarre and stupid. For now it’s still easy to change.

[Mandragola]

Another slight update. I've built the gunner.

 

 

This has allowed me to stick him on the body of the thing to get an idea what it'll look like finished.

 

 

 

I think the overall shape of the thing is actually pretty good. The gunner ends up maybe a bit higher in the air than I'd like, but it's not too bad at all. It means he'll be standing on the engine, which is ok as there'll be a space it could conceivably occupy.

 

Now to get all this stuff to actually fit together. I might remove the gun shield, which is only pushed-fitted on for now. Not sure though, as a bit of protection for the gunner would obviously be sensible.

 

What do you think of it?

 

Now to get all this stuff to actually fit together.

Edited November 9, 2020 by Mandragola