More Castellax Class Battle-automata

My second Castellax is finished (apart from that mold line on the leg which I just discovered on the photos…). Again with a magnetised Hades autocannon as Mauler bolt cannon and a claw made from the Helbrute’s power fist and some Forgefiend tentacles.

The model got a much more dynamic pose this time compared to my first attempt, especially via the turned head / mask. 

 

Leading the robots – the sinister magi of Complex Epsilon-IV

My plans on fielding at least half a dozen Castellax Class Battle-automata and probably two Thanatar Class Siege-automata require some Cortex Controllers to work properly on the battlefield. To get these, I am going to need 2-3 magi in my lists. Twice a Magos Dominus and an additional Archmagos Prime for large games.

The first Magos Dominus is based on a really common idea between Mechanicum players – the Vampire Counts’ Cairn Wraith.

 

Warp lightning over Mordheim – Clan Skryre

In this post I’ll take a closer look at the Clan Skryre warband. Using the rules made by Firuz the Accursed (with minor adjustments/clarifications) I played them very successfully in our campaign before last vs. The Undead and Witch hunters.

The warband plays equally different than and similar to the Clan Eshin Skaven from the rulebook. Most warbands will end up with a huge henchmen meat shield and some serious hitters in the backyard. The heavy hitters of Clan Skryre aren’t just heroes but also the Weapon specialist henchmen. Special equipment is the warband’s biggest strength – Warp lightning gives you a better hitting bow with in-built ricochet and nice but expensive upgrades. Poison wind globes can bring down the toughest enemy and are also useful for mass annihilation, if thrown into close combat (especially on multiplayer scenarios). Finally the warpflame thrower is tremendously dangerous for both sides and so frightening in its possibilities that it is able determine the enemies’ whole movement. Their numerous slaves slow the enemy and protect your vital warband members, but you should never let that Overseer getting ooa or you will lose up to 60gc after the game.

 

Clockworkers Part 5 – WIPs of the living

While my Mordheim stuff is currently deferred in favour of my Dark Mechanicus force, I’d like to share some pictures of the Clockworkers warband’s living part, namely all the heroes and two Handymen.

My Master of Clocks Marek von Stetz is nearly a pure Greatsword model with an Outrider helmet for a more prussian look. Then I added some small clockwork-related bits to make him less imperial. 

 

Tick-Tock – Who are those Clockworkers?

Several of my posts involve some ominous Clockworkers, but what or who are they?

The Clockworkers are a new warband in our upcoming alternative setting for Mordheim – The Sealed City.

Gathered under Henrik Bramstetter, a former Empire Master Engineer from Altdorf, the Clockworkers are mainly technicians who think of steam power as a dead end and study the formidable clockworks of the Sealed City. Backed by the city’s extraordinary supply of moonstone, they where even able to decrypt and reproduce the mysteries of the clockwork-driven constructs, which can be found throughout the city.

 

Thanatar Siege-automaton conversion WIP

Back in the days when I tried to field my Mechanicum force with a Coteaz-based Grey Knights list, I built a daemonforged alternative for the Nemesis Dreadknight. The model got abandoned as long as Forge World had no rules for a thing in that size, but luckily the third Horus Heresy book brought us the Thanatar class and some early pictures of the huge model showed a new glorious future for my conversion. 

 

Tutorial: dark & cheap Castellax conversions

This time you will get a tutorial on how to build some twisted Castellax battle-automata for the Dark Mechanicum.

As soon as Forge World released its second Horus Heresy book, I abandoned any ambitions on making the Dark Mechanicum happen with some “count-as” rules in Warhammer 40k and hopped on the 30k train instead. With the current third book we got the suitable armylist for a horde of daemonforged battle-automata and their sinister constructors.

So I needed some Castellax (or better a lot of them) as a base for my Mechanicum force. But while the official models are surely neat, they were on the one hand not chaotic and warp-tainted looking enough for my taste and on the other hand expensive as hell. Even with the 10% discount on the bundle, a single model would cost me £32.40, what finally drove me into building my own version of the Castellax and at last gave me an opportunity to use all those crappy Helbrutes from various Dark Vengeance sets.

For one Castellax you need:

• 1 Dark Vengeance Helbrute kit (~7,00€ from forums – never pay more than 9,00€)
• 1 Robogear Spider kit (~3,00€ on ebay)
• 1 Dark Eldar Talos/Cronos Mask (~0,50€ in bitz stores)
• 1 (Chaos) Space Marine vehicle cupola
• 1 additional “arm” (I used an excess Forgefiend leg)
• 1 ranged weapon of choice (I used an excess Hades autocannon as Mauler bolt cannon)
• optional: additional bitz like mechanical tentacles or similar weird close combat weapons
• putty and (liquid) green stuff

Thus, if you have to buy everything, the Castellax will cost about 15,00€.

Step 1: Take out the saw

The DV Helbrute gives us the upper body and one arm, but needs some sawing to get rid of those legs and other useless parts. Remove anything that’s marked red and carefully make some straight cuts to remove the arms along the red lines. You could leave the green highlighted tentacles, but dependant on the model’s pose they might interfere with the left arm.