The Saturnine 27th, "The Reaping Death"

[Petay1985]

beautiful work fella, really nice to see complimenting narrative too. looking forward to seeing more.

[constant_ones]

This is how Imperial Guard should look in my mind, not like modern armies but a weird hybrid of gathic-sci-fi fun. Are you planning on tanks as well?

[malika]

Would an anti-grav tank be overkill? You know, one of those made from a deodorant can?

[Hadriel Caine]

The unit looks sweet. 6th had best come out soon so I can finalise my FO. Hope you don't get too many nasty surprises. I really like these conversions. Keep it up. An aerosol can tank would be badass.

[BeatTheBeat]

Petay1985 - Thanks! Trying to get into the character of each unit while keeping to some kind of narrative... We'll see how it goes when the **** hits the fan!

constant_ones - Definitely the feel I'm going for! Happy to hear it works. As for tanks, see below

malika - Yes. (longer answer - still a 40k Guard regiment, not THAT much old-school craziness. Besides, I never liked the idea)

Hadriel Caine - Thanks mate! Yeah, we'll see where we end up with 6th. As said above though, expect no grav tanks here.


Painted this yesterday, and it has REALLY made me motivated to finish 1st platoon and move onto company command so that I can stick it on a model... Oh, and will update the first page as well with this.



And here is the latest addition to the army:



All this plastic will eventually be transformed into a bog standard Leman Russ Exterminator. No conversion. No fancy stuff. Just brutal autocannon death. I know many of you want to see some pre-heresy stuff, but in the short term it sadly won't happen, for three reasons: 1) I need to make some cheap-ish additions to the army to improve the cash/pts-ratio (currently about 1£/1pts), and 2) I don't see the Saturnine as ONLY having weird, exotic stuff, they clearly need to replace stuff every now and then and won't bring their hallowed relics to every scrap, so some more mundane additions to the army are in order, and 3) Damn, I love the Exterminator model!

Maybe I'll write some fluff specific to the 27th soon, to go with the standard. Feels like most of what needs to be said was said in the first general fluff post though, so we'll see what I can come up with!

Cheers,
BTB

[Sauragnmon]

I'm with you on the Exterminator - I have five Russes in my force, and not one of them has a Battle Cannon. I have my Vanquisher, and then I have two designations for gun fit with my Russes - Shooty: Russ Exterminator, Russ Punisher (Paskwagen). Blasty: Russ Executioner, Russ Eradicator. Shooties get loaded with Heavy Bolters, Blasties get a heavy bolter and a pair of plasma cannons. The Vanquisher just has the lascannon and its vindicator gun, because its sole role is to kill important targets - tanks, vehicles, characters. Because a 150mm Sniper Rifle is not overkill, it's Insurance.

[DeathCat147]

Lovely banner BTB Im looking forward to the Russ. Any idea's for its colour scheme?

[malika]

Is that Mortarion on the banner?

[GomezAddams]

Christ thats good. I mean honestly thats the kind of thing I could never imagine doing no matter how many times I've tried.

Which leads me to mu next point - how are you with Stags (or Ravens actually... currently chewing over which of the two to go with)

[BeatTheBeat]

Sauragnamon - Hahaha that's an awesome tagline! As for my Exterminator, I went for a lascannon and no sponsons. Looks before playability, it's how I roll!

DeathCat147 - Thanks! Yeah, I was leaning towards white first but now I'm thinking black, with white and red company markings towards the front on the sides. Lots of weathering too I think.

malika - Oooooh, I see what you did there! What with the Saturnine fluff that's almost too good a hint to pass up on. Will see if I can incorporate it in some way, it surely has to be something other regiments' Circle members are whispering about. I also plan for the 27th to be quite obsessed with death...

GomezAddams - Huge thanks mate! I paint a lot (on canvas, I mean) so this was not a huge deal for me actually. Posting a painting I did recently to prove I'm not boasting EDIT: Oh and yeah, about the stag, didn't I send you a PM about that? All for the idea, that's what inspired me to take the Reaper as this regiment's symbol/heraldry/thing.


But first, progress:




And then, my painting "The March of the Saturnine 27th" that I did at the beginning of this project a couple of weeks back:



It's a 70x70 cm canvas, painted with acrylics. Hope you like it, it feels weird to post my "real" paintings on here!

Cheers,
BTB

[Petay1985]

the artwork is beautiful fella, a really nice piece. it has a very 'killzone' Hellghast feel about it, i hope you don't mind me saying. good fluff, great models and a talent for painting, your are quite the creative monkey... very impressive stuff all round!

[malika]

Hmm, add that same detailed craziness to the tank as you did to the infantry!

As for the hint... It's something very interesting to play with. Not only a potential obsession with death, but also to see how a regiment with such a long history and tradition (especially since they're from the Sol system) deals with the fact that a major chunk of their history contains elements that have been erased from Imperial history. Then combine this to them being practically neighbors with a Space Marine chapter who are known to exterminate entire populations for just having heard about such rumours of treason and you got something rather intriguing...

[Sauragnmon]

An exterminator with a lascannon isn't a wasteful concept - the Exterminator is a pretty well rounded layout for a tank, being the S7 AP4 hailstorm that it is, the Lascannon really makes a nice secondary option because of the high S low AP, it makes Transport Hunting at Long Range a lot easier.

[Hadriel Caine]

Epic banner. Really nicely done. I also like the canvass- obviously your 2D skills are very good. Hope to see more free hand as this progresses. Sad about the grav tank but the LR is shaping up nicely.

[DeathCat147]

The Russ is shaping up nicely BTB and your artwork is awesome Do you plan to do any more artwork based around the Saturnine regiments?

[BeatTheBeat]

Petay1985 - Thanks! I have no idea what Hellghast is though, but if my painting reminds you of it, it's probably good

malika - After some further thinking I think I'll skip the Mortarion thing. First off, I'm not a fan of the "OOOOOH, everything's CONNECTED" that you often get in fantasy and sci fi, I think it feels more realistic if some things happen just by chance. Second, I doubt that even the Saturnine Circle is aware of what really happened back in those days, I like to think that the knowledge is simply forgotten or lost. At most, they will know that the arch-traitor Horus turned and that some Saturnine regiments might have turned with him, and that's just the Circle. Ordinary guardsmen would MAYBE recognise the name of Horus, I think. As for the Grey Knights, aren't they a top secret-thing? Don't think the Saturnine regiments would know of them, despite sharing the same area of space. What the Grey Knights know of the Saturnine is of course an entirely different thing...

Sauragnamon - Yeah, I figure that too! That's basically the role my Exterminator will take.

Hadriel Caine - Thanks, fun thing is I learned to paint 2D by painting warhammer models. It's basically the same thing - basecoat, shade, highlight. At least the way I paint!

DeathCat147 - Thanks! No, not at the moment, I felt that while it kicked off the project in a good way, the models now provide the mood. Never say never though!



Put the last touches on the Leman Russ's base just now, and here it is in all its armoured glory. First tank model I've painted in ages, probably since I did my Volkhov 4th log waaaaay back. The LR kit went together like a dream, so much easier than the older Chimeras that I've assembled before (and I guess the new chimeras go together as well as this kit). There will at some point be a X-1B as well, and these are supposed to be infantry support tanks fully integrated within the rest of the company, acting as recon units from time to time. Yeah, the 27th are no Catachans, when they do recon they do bloody HEAVY recon...

Oh yeah, the base. I just feel that having an unbased model, tank or not, is heresy. Not uniform at all... Also, with all the weathering going on, a tank just feels weird standing straight on the desk (or wherever). So it got a base, and I'm really chuffed with the result!












Saturnine 27th, II Company, X Platoon, Leman Russ Exterminator 1A

-SIX-

Dusk fell over Marec 14. The sky had turned a deep crimson far off towards the setting sun, and across the vast expanse of plains, the grey blanket of twilight was settling. Most of the colours of the day had been reduced to monochrome variations. Small, black flecks were moving over the plains, spread out, bigger black flecks sparsely present amongst the smaller ones at too regular intervals to be natural.

Second company were closing in on the position of fourth company that they had been sent to reinforce, and their column had disintegrated and reconstituted itself as a dispersed line, a more suitable formation when facing the unknown. They were moving at a crawling pace, partly due to caution and partly because of the diminishing light.

In the distance, the sound of gunfire and heavy weapons discharge that had accompanied the first hour of their advance had died away.

The fourth lived still, it seemed. Captain Kournunost herself were passing on communications to the rest of the regiment's vox as they arrived from regimental command. They lived, but had suffered horrendously, and what's worse, they didn't have a single broken and bloody enemy corpse to show for it. Caspher, commander of Leman Russ Exterminator X-1A, switched to the internal comms and sighed. The sigh itself would probably get lost over the loud and monotonous rattle of the tracks and the cacaphony of the engines, but he knew that his crew would recognise the lack of words for a sigh anyway. He was good at sighs. "No action for us today, folks. It seems fourth survived, somehow. Huge casualties though. Seems like a large chunk of their landers were just shot out of the sky, and the rest of the company came under heavy fire as they disembarked." Here, he sighed again. "They didn't find anything to fire back at, though. You know the fourth. All trigger and no smarts. So now we'll be stuck with babysitting them while they get reinforced from ninth, which seems to have had a similar experience. Be prepared for boredom and snide remarks from the 'veterans' of fourth."

He clicked the comms unit off. Whatever had hit fourth company, had done so fast, and whatever that was heavy enough to down a troop lander and fast enough to get away before found, was weird. Caspher didn't like those news at all. They were supposed to be fighting third-grade PDF forces, and it should all have been an easy stroll from the landing sites to the meager defence lines of the capitol. Well, for second company it still was an easy stroll. But the 27th were definitely not supposed to be losing half a company, not in the whole campaign, and this was just a few hours in.

Caspher sighed again. Bloody dustball bastards. He had friends in the fourth. Falkas, Varden, Kolkannam... More than likely, some or all of them were gone. They owed him money. Bloody dustball bastards...

His comms unit crackled to life.

"Commander, you got to see this. Take a peek."

As he looked out his periscope, he realised that, yes, he really did have to see this. Across the shallow valley floor that had opened up before the advancing second company, there lay the black broken carcasses of giant birds of space, still feeding flames in places. The sight was as stunning as it was horrific.

"Bloody dustball bastards..."

-END-

Cheers,
BTB

[malika]

malika - After some further thinking I think I'll skip the Mortarion thing. First off, I'm not a fan of the "OOOOOH, everything's CONNECTED" that you often get in fantasy and sci fi, I think it feels more realistic if some things happen just by chance. Second, I doubt that even the Saturnine Circle is aware of what really happened back in those days, I like to think that the knowledge is simply forgotten or lost. At most, they will know that the arch-traitor Horus turned and that some Saturnine regiments might have turned with him, and that's just the Circle. Ordinary guardsmen would MAYBE recognise the name of Horus, I think. As for the Grey Knights, aren't they a top secret-thing? Don't think the Saturnine regiments would know of them, despite sharing the same area of space. What the Grey Knights know of the Saturnine is of course an entirely different thing...

I didn't mean it in such a way that everything is connected. I find it more interesting to see how the Saturnine would have dealt with this chunk of history, what kind of revisionism did they apply? Meaning that nowadays none of the regiment might know about their world's past, but it's nice to still see those hints here and there, without anybody knowing what they actually mean.

[Chem-Dog]

Where to start....
Firstly, good call on the Captain's hair, the camouflage effect of my suggestion totally escaped my notice. She looks sweet, I especially like the fact her eyes are blue, it's a nice touch.

Then there's the Banner. Sexy. As. Hell.

The painting is great, I might not know art, but I know awesome. Kudos for having the cojones to post it here.

And finally, the tank. I'm always a wee bit envious of anyone who can make a tank look used whilst still managing to make it like tidy, a great job.

The only thing that would make me like this thread more than I already do is finding out you're a single 25 year old female who's imminently about to move to my home town (there's a flat going in my block, quite roomy and the rent's pretty reasonable).

[JackDaw]

Well, it's not Druchii but godsdammit I like it. Everything is looking peachy so far mate - the captain is John Blanche distilled into miniature form, which is about as 40k as it gets. And of course your background is top-notch. I even like the base on the Leman Russ - it finishes the whole thing off nicely and is something I might need to borrow for my Astartes tanks...

Looking forward to seeing more

[Bob Hunk]

This is a great log you have here BeatTheBeat. The Saturnine 27th are very grimdark, very Blanche-esque (as others have said) and very 40K! My favourite is the female captain, but I also love the Admech team.

The base on the Leman Russ is interesting to see. I've mused about basing tanks before, but wasn't sure how it would look. It does look neat though, and will probably be a great opportunity for some mini-dioramas.