Nephilim and Stormwolf as LSF and Caestus?

[Valkyrion]

Does it strain the suspension of disbelief in a 30k setting to use a Nephilim as a Lightning Strike Fighter and Stormwolf/fang as a Caestus Assault Ram?

 

I think the stormwolf as a caestus is pushing it a bit, but I think the Nephilim is a goer?

[LameBeard]

I guess this will depend on your opponent. From my perspective, it would be a lot easier to suspend the disbelief if you’re not playing as Dark Angels/Space Wolves.

 

If it’s a metallic purple Nephilim with gold - it helps sell itself as Emperor’s Children Lightning. If it’s a de-wolfed yellow flying brick, it helps sell itself as Imperial Fists Caestus. The modest conversion and loving paint jobs help perceive them as “counts as”. Whereas a model trying to do double duty in 30k and 40k would come across as more of a proxy.

 

Just my opinion. I am a big fan in general of finding ways to do the heresy in plastic. I wonder for LOS etc purposes if both are a bit small? Maybe not such an issue for flyers?

[Noserenda]

From memory the Dark angel fighter works perfectly as one of the heresy era fighters, don't recall which though :)

 

A conversion from a storm wolf would work as a caestus if you doubled the hulls up, otherwise why not run em as upgunned shuttles?

[Eternal Despair]

The DA flyer is closest in size to a Xiphon being just a few cm shorter in both length and wingspan however it is maybe only half to 2/3rds as massive but can still make a convincing stand it. Also while I might be wrong I think the Lightning might be larger than a Xiphon so the DA flyer might be to small to use as stand in but someone who actually owns both or at least a lightning and a xiphon can correct me if I'm wrong.

The storm wolf as a cestus I find varies from play group to play group as to whether its an acceptable stand in. Personally I don't mind it especially after seeing one de-wolfified and done up in IF colours by Horus Heretic over on Instagram.  Again when it comes to the size it is smaller than the cestus but the single ramp/bay is wider and taller than an individual one on a cestus, and slapping two together to make a cestus ends up looking very disproportionate in my opinion. I'd probably just de-wolfify it and call it an alternate pattern 

Horus Heretics IF cestus: here 
 

all of this of course is predicated on your local group being okay with it but generally if you put the effort into it most people won't have a problem with it 
 

Edited August 28, 2021 by Eternal Despair

[Lucien Eilam]

For me, both fall into the camp of “too much of a stretch to be comfortable doing it myself, but not so much of a stretch that I’d object to my opponent doing it”.

[Valkyrion]

I'm not sure about your second link, Eternal Despair, that's a bit weird.....but I'm actually more sold on the caestuswolf now than I was before. 

 

I think the Nephilim makes a better LSF than xiphon because of the weapon mount options - you've got the twin lascannon, wing mounted missile launchers and the heavy bolters are only a bit of lengthening away from being autocannons. failing that they could even be used as heavy bolters, it is effectively a downgrade after all. 

[No Foes Remain]

With the Caestus no longer being sold the easiest option is to run the SW transport as it, the other options I can see being hoping they bring it out in plastic or building one out of plasticard. I think just one single rather than one doubled would look better (and be eaiser) and just need to swap out the weapon options to match the Caestus.

 

With the Nephilim, I'm siding with Valkyrion, I think it would be a good stand in for the Lightning as they have a smilar hull apperance. For the lack of autocannons you could always grab the autocannons from either the Admech walker, the IG heavy weapon team or the IG Sentinel and replace the heavy bolters with them. With a bit of work it would probably look good.

  Though the DA icons would need trimming down (unless you are running the 1st Legion) and I'm undecided about the DA wings on the Nephilim's wings, either sand down or greenstuff the gaps? Not sure which would be eaiser or look better.

[Eternal Despair]

I'm not sure about your second link, Eternal Despair, that's a bit weird.....but I'm actually more sold on the caestuswolf now than I was before. 

 

I think the Nephilim makes a better LSF than xiphon because of the weapon mount options - you've got the twin lascannon, wing mounted missile launchers and the heavy bolters are only a bit of lengthening away from being autocannons. failing that they could even be used as heavy bolters, it is effectively a downgrade after all. 

that was a bit odd the link was working for me before, oh well I removed it to avoid confusion in the future.

 

Regardless the nephalim fighter isn’t too hard to clean up, from memory the only sculpted on pieces that are explicitly raven wing that need to be removed are the two icons on the tail section which isn’t too bad. Personally I’d leave the wing detailing on the wings, there’s nothing about them that screams dark angel or raven wing. Imho filling them in would look odd as it would look like there’s a random plate bolted onto the wings and conversely sanding it off, aside from being a pain, would remove all the detailing so you’d have to either recarve where the panel lines would go etc or leave it oddly smooth and devoid of detail.

 

Either way I’m keen to see you paint them up in the future Valkyrion

[WrathOfTheLion]

I'd be fine with either, especially the Stormwolf as the Caestus. Since FW doesn't sell the Caestus anymore, it's either use the Stormwolf or acquire it by other means, you don't really have any other choice.

[SkimaskMohawk]

My questions would be "what other unit could they reasonably confuse it with" and "do you gain any significant advantage over the original".

 

Other than being deliberalty obtuse it's pretty hard to say theyre not a good counts as. In terms of size they might be smaller and I'd usually say a significant reduction affects gameplay...but they're still large flying models and are almost always going to be visible. Just make sure the weapon mountings are similar so they retain the same blindspots as the originals

[No Foes Remain]

I think the Nephilim is slightly shorter than the Lightning, for the Stormwolf I've been talking to a friend and we think if you got two and basically trimmed down and glued the hulls together it would be about the same size. The only issue would be the rear wings/engines which (apart from grabbing some wings from either the Valk or a Nephilim) we can't think of a solution other than just doubling up the engines on either side, so having four each side rather than two and attaching the small wings to the top and bottom row engines.

[Charlo]

I think both are ultimately fine, especially as HH is a more narrative game. With them being flyers there are really minimal gains to be made by having a slightly different size.

[SkimaskMohawk]

I think both are ultimately fine, especially as HH is a more narrative game. With them being flyers there are really minimal gains to be made by having a slightly different size.

Well, kind of. It mostly depends on weapon mountings and where they're positioned in relation to their 22.5 degree arcs. Shortening a caestus wingspan would be a self nerf because the Rockets arc would start to clip through the hull. Having the melta at the front of the hull instead of between the booms gives it far more line of sight on the horizontal axis but denies it a lot of vertical reach, which is also more of a nerf because you usually can't shoot flyers with blasts (but then again most people pretend vertical arcs don't exist, so it'd be a buff in that case).