Tuesday 8 August 2023

Cry Kitbash!

Having assembled a unit of Havocs from the proper kit, I found I was left with a lot of spare heavy weapons.

Black Legion Havoc kitbash for Warhammer 40k

And so I decided to imitate the action of the cheapskate, and kitbash together some more heavy weapon heretics.

When I first saw the new Chaincannons, I knew I wanted a whole unit of them. In their infinite wisdom, GW have made this a tricky (or expensive) proposition, but not beyond the realms of ingenuity. 

Black Legion Havoc kitbash for Warhammer 40k

The bodies are regular Chaos Space Marine Legionaries (the new ones, which are a different scale to the original ones in my army, and so they scale up as Havocs quite neatly). The weapons are mostly from the Havoc kit - one normal chaincannon, two heavy bolters with barrels from the Taurox gatling guns (thank you, Kraken) and a reaper autocannon from the regular squad.

Black Legion Havoc kitbash for Warhammer 40k

It works well enough for me. You might argue that the heavy bolter ammo belts are too large for the chaincannon's calibre (but who's button counting here?). The autocannon one has no belt feed at all, but I quite like that as a different variant.

And since we're talking mismatched calibres here, I hacked up a brass rod to little the bases with spent shells. Completely out of scale, of course, but I like the effect.

While we're chatting guns and ammo: apparently these bulky machines of spitting death don't count as 'heavy' any more. This is stupid. 10th Edition is stupid.

Black Legion Havoc kitbash for Warhammer 40k

They were painted in the same style as my Chaos Terminators, which is working quite well, and might actually help me get to the end of my Black Legion reserves.
  • Gold armour: Retributor Armour base, Agrax Earthshade wash, Gehenna Gold drybrush
  • Black armour: Black Legion contrast, Mechanicus Standard Grey drybrush,
  • Pipes, straps & gun barrels: Ironbreaker base, Nuln Oil wash
  • Bullets: Runelord Brass + Xv88 base, Agrax Earthshade wash
  • Eyes: Mephiston Red base, Carroburg Crimson wash
  • Skin: Rakarth Flesh base, Reikland Flesh wash, Pallid Wych Flesh layer
  • Cloth and topknots: Khone Red base, Nuln Oil wash, Evil Sunz Scarlet layer

Obsidius Mallex, lord of the Blackstone Fortress

No unit of Havocs would be complete without a brave champion to soak those first two wounds. 

I needed a model in a hurry, and Obsidius Mallex, lord of the Blackstone Fortress, was unfortunate enough to be in my eyeline and on a 40mm base. Sorry for the demotion, chum.

Black Legion Havoc kitbash for Warhammer 40k

And so the Havocs are ready to take the field. With no armour penetration, they'll be good for clearing hordes, or pinging off the armour of regular infantry. But with Dark Pacts, I'll be chucking dice by the bucketload, so who's the true winner here?

10 comments:

  1. These look great and will kick out a ferocious amount of fire. I do think that the Overwatch strat in tenth could be very interesting with this squad just from the sheer number of dice you'd be rolling. Also, has the original Purge Chaincannon conversion been dipped yet or is he still waiting to be repurposed?

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    1. Yes, there's some potential there with Dark Pacts.
      And all The Purge models are still in limbo, waiting gor their new assignments.

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  2. Smashing stuff, and great to see those cannon barrels put to use!

    Yes, 10th has some pretty stupid stuff. Not sure that taking Heavy off a weapon in a squad that used to ignore the rule anyway is the best example, though! Is it gone in Legionary squads too?

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    Replies
    1. Legionnaires do have 'Heavy' chaincannons, but that's part of my complaint - I now need to know two different sets of rules for essentially the same weapon (as a further example, I think there are five different types of twin heavy bolter for a Land Raider).

      I applaud the drive for simplicity, but they seem to have ballsed it up a little bit with this approach.

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    2. It might help me stop trying to memorise the stats for everything, I suppose, that's probably for the good.

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    3. They have achieved the same end result for hitting as before: Havocs hit on 3s all the time; Legionnaries will hit on 4s if they move and 3s if they stand still. However the naming convention is a tad odd: Havoc "heavy" weapons are prefixed with the word Havoc and most Legionary Heavy weapons aren't...apart from the Havoc Autocannon which has exactly the same name for both

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    4. The Heavy Bolter varieties are simply nuts though. The T-Sons one just looks like a typo where they've switched 1s and 2s for AP and damage for no apparent reason

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    5. A typo? From GW? In their new shiny rules? HERESY

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    6. I also learned that Legionnaires can't have power fists, but they can have 'heavy accursed weapons' (which can take the form of a heavy, powerful fist). To make things simple, these have the same stats as the Terminator and Chosen's 'power fists'.

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    7. At this point, it's clearly a deliberate attempt to trigger you.

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