Army of the Future part 3

In a previous post I had talked about an inquisitorial army I intend to build along with an Adeptus Arbites contingent. Well, I've begun the HQ as seen in this post, and thanks to some Instant Mold now I've got the troops started too.

If you've never heard of instant mold, let me just sing it's praises for a minute. Its a rubbery plastic materials that you drop in hot water to transform into a malleable putty. You can then use it to make press molds like a lot of people do with greenstuff. It's permanently reusable and nothing sticks to it so its great for making your own greenstuff bits. I used it to make casts of some old Adeptus Arbites models I had. 

I'm really just making casts of the shoulder pads so I can convert my own Arbites with the help of some Maxmini Space Police heads. They look a little different from classic Arbites but they're great for my Judge Dredd inspired sensibilities.

I'm going to be fielding them as marine scouts that will be allies to a larger Inquisition Army. I haven't settled on a final list yet but there will be 20 Arbites in total, at least 5 of whom will be snipers, with Chaplain Cassius (playing the role of Judge Dredd) as their leader. I may also include an Adeptus Mechanicus thunderfire cannon as well to provide some much needed long range be firepower. I'm thinking of building a Arbites style bastion too. They'll be backed up by 2 or more Inquisitorial retinues loaded with hellguns, meltas, plasma, some crusaders and a few Jokaero! 

I hope to have these guys all built and "greenstuffed"in the next week or two so hopefully they'll get some airbrush face time along with the 20ish stormtroopers that are waiting for paint.

Army of the Future

(One of the many nice looking armies encountered at the NOVA Open)

I attended the NOVA open recently as a spectator and I learned a few things I hadn't figured out about tournaments yet. First, the theme of most of the armies that are successful in a highly competitive atmosphere like the NOVA is simply 'Winning'. Second, I care more about a good theme and background for my army than winning. That being said, even if I abandoned the 'fluff' behind my arguably powerful Grey Knights army, and built a list to win I'd probably still come in at the bottom tier (I was in the meat of the bottom quarter at the NOVA last year).

What does this mean for the future of my armies? I'll be trying to build a successful tournament army, it will have redundancy, firepower and most of all it will fit in with the style of army lists that seem so popular at tournaments since the addition of fliers. It will be called 'Operation Douche' and will be an IG forced focusing on getting the maximum amount of Conscripts on the board and choking up my opponents with corpses. We'll see if I can keep up the steam to get it ready for the NOVA next year.

The more imminent focus however will be an Inquisitorial Task Force from the Grey Knights codex with an allied contingent of Adeptus Arbites (who will be played by Space Marine Scouts).  I've always wanted an Arbites army ever since I first saw the 2nd ed models and with the recent release of Maxmini's 'Space Police Helmets' I decided the finally take the plunge.

I've begun work on my Judge Dredd look alike who will be a counts as Chaplain Cassius, and he'll soon be followed by about 20 scouts of various types and maybe an Adeptus Mechanicus Thunderfire cannon as well.

Seeing him blown up this large makes me see how much of a hack job I did with the greenstuff. I'm going to have to do a lot of cleanup.

I hope to bring this army to Adepticon for the 40k friendly this year so I'll be trying to use blog posts as a motivator to keep my momentum going to get this assembled by about February.