Dave's 40K Minis - Craftworlds
About fifteen years after doing my Zeon-themed Tau forces and 8 years after giving them
away, I got lured back into 40K on a limited basis, to play against fellow
faculty at the college bookstore. The Wraithguard have a special rule that
makes them harder to lock up in melee, plus they had the fewest models to
paint of any of the "get started" box sets, so I picked them up at a Free
Comic Book Day sale. After some pondering, I decided to go with a First
Order theme, with the Wraithlord as Captain Phasma and the Wraithguard as
Stormtoopers. The Warwalker was an obvious AT-ST. Rather than trying to
freehand all the logos, I got some decals online...and to my dismay they were
water-slip decals rather than stickers. Water decals suck SO MUCH. I used
up four of them failing to get any to stick before giving up and just gluing
the things (with some of the paper backing peeled off) to the minis. And on
the last batch of Wraithguard, I gave up on even peeling, as I got a decal
glued to my thumb.
All painted during May of 2019.
- The whole 499 point force. (I didn't buy the splatbook, so I had to do
some poking around online for an armybuilder program that would let me get
the point totals for things.) While the plastics used in 40K minis are
better than Privateer Press resin, I still needed to do a lot of shaping and
green-stuff-ing to get things properly assembled, so "paint then assemble"
was a no-go other than the Warwalker's windshield.
- Farseer: There
were no option parts for the base cost version, so he's got the spear and I
took a flamer off the Wraithlord to make up the points. The inspiration is
First Order officers like General Hux. I realized too late that I could've
used the spare head from the Warwalker pilot and made this a ginger like
Hux.
- Wraithlord:
Captain Phasma, natch. My original plan was to do everything in Molotow
chrome, but the design ended up too close for the pen to fit into all the
gaps, so I used DecoArt Brilliant Silver on the armor and just used Molotow
chrome on the glaive blade. Loadout is a Ghost Glaive, a Bright Lance, a
Starcannon, a Flamer, and a Shuriken Catapult, for 134 points.
- Warwalker: The
First Order AT-ST doesn't look that much different from the Imperial version,
and I didn't feel like adding all the panel lines from the AT-ST, so I just
broke up the two main shades of gray arbitrarily in homage to the AT-ST color
scheme. I lost the bit that goes on the nose end (it's tiny and took a weird
bounce), but that's fine, as I wanted to put a First Order symbol there
anyway. Loadout is the standard shuriken cannons. I added some leftover Tau
Fire Team bits to the base, as a symbolic break with the past.
- Wraithguard: First Order Stormtroopers on bases enhanced by some Models &
Minis custom bases. I glued the M&M bases on top of the official bases and
then sanded it down to be flush. These bases were irregulars from a grab
bag, so they weren't quite 40mm wide and couldn't be used on their own. I
used Aurebesh numerals on the left pauldrons...they barely look different
from regular retro-digital numerals, though.
- If I remember to, I'll take pictures the first time I actually play
these, assuming that the plans don't fall apart. (Later note: it didn't come
together that summer, and then COVID hit, and...eh. Never have played 'em,
but they still sit in my office at work.)
