Wednesday 20 May 2015

'nids part 169 - Deathleaper - TO DONE!

It's taken a while but Deathleaper has finally been added to the Hive. He'll get his chance to kill at Blow Wars, all I need is some more Lictors for this so-called 'Lictor Shame'.


I have to say I'm not happy about this moniker the Las Vegas Open winning list was saddled with. I don't know if the originator coined it or someone else thinking 9 Lictors is somehow cheesy or overpowered. The fact is we have a Formation that has 6 Lictors straight off the bat  and another one that has 5, so adding anymore isn't exactly overkill. I don't see these as anything worse than Necron Wraiths and you can take bucketloads of them!


Lictors had already proved effective winning Throne of Skulls a good nine months or more before LVO and in both lists it's the addition of Genestealers and Mawlocs that make an OK formation into an effective table controlling force that can appear all over the shop - perfect for Maelstrom missions. Ultimately we've got enough to contend with in list building I don't see why we needed the addition of  'shame' to our choices for something that's just 'difficult to deal with' as opposed to 'impossible to deal with'.


Anyway, you can see the completed Blog Wars banner, the lettering came out OK and you can just about make it out thanks to all the creases in the fabric, shading and highlights. It is a 'shame' that I couldn't fit the number 9 on it but I still stand by it obscuring the banner too much. So I added some blood splatter, although it could have done to be a bit darker.


I also finally used some of my Secret Weapon Miniatures weathering powder to represent the dust of Ferron Proxima. I mixed it in with some Lahmian medium and it went on fine. I struggled with the idea it might look like rust [well it is Orange Rust afterall] but it is rust anyway. The reason Ferron Proxima is red is the high ferrous content of the rock, essentially the whole surface is rusting! So it's not the tyre that's rusty it's just coated with rust. Anyway, this is what I'll be adding to my Ravenwing wheels at some point so I'm really pleased with the results.


I'm not 100% happy with the piece of broken bronze detailing he's standing on, I think I'd have been better off just doing it red/orange liek the rest of the base but we can't win everything.




You still can't see the bits of blue corrugated steel under the platform but I like the sandbags, the cross-hatching giving the illusion of roughly woven sacks.



Just some close-ups of his face. If I'm honest the six eyes don't really do it for me, the single eyed standard Lictor looks far more menacing because I can get a little more detail in each eyeball.


But I do think this is a particularly effective image.





The sharp end of the stick!


So there we go, another completed model another big red stamp of approval. Granted not on the list but it was something that had to be done, even 9 months behind schedule. I've another Lictor somewhere to start, I wanted to change his pose a bit but right now his Chameleonic Skin is working to good effect and I can't find the little fella should he ever reveal himself I may consider eventually securing the three remaining Lictors to complete the brood of 'shame'. Until then I'll share some pics later on of both 'Death' and 'Deathleaper', I should probably think of some other nicknames for the new ones too.

10 comments:

  1. Haha, blow wars.. (sorry)
    I agree with the lictor shame sentiment, taking a unit that has long been considered sub par and using it for its strengths to make a really effective list is great. Its one of the reasons I love the army, I don't play it btw. However its an army that isn't a no brainer to play, unlike some previous top tier armies, leaf blower and serpent spam to name a couple, anyone could play those lists and walk away with a win, as the army list more or less plays itself. With lictor shame it takes a good general to know how to play the list against the opponents and the mission to get a win. Look at one of the guys from facing the grey tide from their recent podcast about his experience. Not an easy list to play.

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  2. Oh, lovely looking Deathleaper by the way. I'm planning on taking him to blog wars as well. Be my first time using him. Banner looks great.

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    1. I don't swear often but he flipping sucks! He went up against an Autarch last night hitting on 3s and wounding on 2s and didn't even wound! He very nearly got launched! If I hadn't painted him specifically for the event I'd swap in Old One Eye.

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    2. Yeah he is a bit of a lackluster super assassin. Far better equipped to take out grots then warlords. However he is one of the cheapest special characters, just a shame he takes up a Flyrant, sorry HQ slot.

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    3. Indeed, that's the difficulty for nid players in the Blog Wars army choices. All our special characters are HQs except The Red Terror now. Back when we had the Doom I could run both Flyrants but now he's the default choice which is a shame.

      The only other option [which doesn't actually exist as a BW Special Character, so it's not an option] is any of the Deathstorm named units, in particular the Spawn of Cryptus if he was on the list and according to Battlescribe that's in the Troop choice of your primary CAD.

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    4. He's an upgrade for a squad of genestealers isn't he?
      I don't have deathstorm myself.

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  3. Brilliant! That base is phenomenal. I like the mottling effect on the joints and base of the tail. I don't use Deathleaper either tbh but he'd be great if he wasn't an HQ. I'd like to attend Blow Wars. Do you roll your own?

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  5. Nice work; I am not a big fan of the stock standard Deathleaper model but you really have turned him into a centrepiece. Regardless of how flipped Lictors are, I'll be damned if I don't take one every battle. They are just so gribbly ;-)

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  6. Lictor shame came about because the list that has won multiple tournaments now was 100% downplayed a non function trash list by the online community. If you weren't running the flyrant formation (skyblight?) everyone felt you weren't competitive.

    So he "shamed" the net into admitting they were wrong. Thus lictorshame.

    It's definitely not overpowered by any means, as it requires extreme skill to play, and is unforgiving from a mistake standpoint. It's definitely not a list (as firewasp points out) that you can pick up and play. It requires LOTS of practice, over and over again.

    Your deathleaper looks awesome, and I love all the base work and detail you put into it. I hope he'll start performing to match the quality and execution of his paintjob soon!

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