An exciting box arrived today. After my Eldar once again lost spectacularly to a force of Space Marines I decided it was time to make a change and get round to building that Adeptus Mechanicus army I've wanted for a couple of years now. The Eldar can come out again once their new codex hits the shelves. The Eagle-eyed among you may already have spotted a page being prepared for the Martian Machinists at the top of the blog. I had thought of making the Mechanicus army a variant on the Grey Knight/Daemon Hunters list, but seeing as Tech Priests and nice old school terminator/marine models go for silly moneys online I was having a rethink. Wanted to sculpt a few key characters but not go the whole hog and scratchbuild an entire army. Then I stumbled upon a lovely little Cult Mechanicus codex (it's not little actually, it's very comprehensive!) by the indomitable Tempus Fugitives. This is a variant on an Imperial Guard codex, with some Mechanicus rules by GW staff and some originating from their own campaigns built in to what looks like a very fair and gameable army list. Shortly after I discovered this I spotted on ebay a bundle of 80 Warzone figures for about £20, then I discovered a review of the product which says the same bundle costs £17 at Prince August. Every little helps so I trotted off to their site and sure enough there was probably the bargain of the century. And it arrived this morning....
Now that's one big packet of plastic! And to make things even more exciting I decided to buy two, thus making the postage ratio a bit cheaper. So here's my lovely box of Skitarii:
160 minis for a little over £40, that'd buy you about 20 at Games Workshop. And these figures aren't at all bad quality either. They are from two different factions, both gas-masked and armoured, and divide up into 8 squads of 10 figures from each faction. Each squad has a sergeant and heavy weapon figure and 8 troopers. The heads and arms are separate and there are two body options for each faction's troopers, so there's really a lot of scope for variation. Because the way I'm organising my Skitarii I'm not going to follow their assembly guidelines exactly. The Bauhaus Ducal Militia I am going to use as my Hyspasists, removing their heavy weapons and replacing them with weapons from the Imperial Regular figures. Some Imperial Regulars are going to become Sagittarrii and be armed with the heavy weapons from their own and the Bauhaus sprues and the remainder of the Imperials are going to be put aside for future units. So first task is to sort them into components, second task is to find a glue that will stick them, I hear they're notoriously difficult to bond together! Loctite superglue has been recommended...
I did actually get 161 figures, I also bought this chappie, thinking he might be a good basis for my Archmagos. Not sure now I see him in the metal, he looks like something out of the Mighty Ducks crossed with Star Wars! Ah well, he'll find a space somewhere I'm sure!
I'm someone who has always gone for small numbers of expensive troops (High Elves, Fimir, Eldar, Space Marines) in order to cut down costs of buying the stuff and time painting it. Now I seem to have two mighty forces on my hands, the snotlings with about 500 of the little blighters and this chunky contingent of guardesque infantry. Hope there's room on my painting desk for all these little guys!
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