How to commit vile Tech Heresy! A tourists guide to Xana II

[Stray]

I wanted to start a thread where I could catalog the process of building up my House Malinax army.

 

I've been collecting Knights for a few years now. Originally, I ran a House Taranis Army - I love Knights and the Skitarii, so the House with the closest ties to Mars seemed a great fit! The issue I ran into was one that I suspect is common to many - the availability of transfer sheets.

 

House Malinax has an equally great colour scheme, is really quite well supported in fluff (for a Knight House), and has a very easy to get hold of set of decals thanks to ladies and gentlemen at Forge World.

 

But a Dark Mechanicum aligned house comes with issues of its own. Typically, Knight Houses don't do well on the table top if run by themselves as pure Knights. If you're playing with Imperial Knights, it's not so much of an issue. You can take that squad of Rangers or Vanguard to screen or capture objectives and have a really fluffy force. With Renegades, not so much - unless you want to play 'counts as'.

 

I really like to play fluffy armies. I'm probably a little 'OCD' in that respect and, over time, I started to research what I could about Xana II itself, it being the defacto home world of my House. (Interesting place Xana II. To describe it as 'slightly dodgy', is somewhat akin to describing water as wet - and they still locked up old Scoria for taking tech heresy a bit too far... it kinda begs the question O.o...)

 

The Knight aspect of my army is pretty simple. I currently own 5 Knights with a 6th awaiting delivery from FW. 

I'm going in blind to an extent as I have no idea whether or not the upcoming codex is going to increase my options at all - right now, I have no access to units like the new Armigers, let alone fluffy troop choices like Skitarii via normal rules support.

 

Xana II is most well known in the fluff as being the Hell Forge that designed and produces the Hell Blade fighter, and Hell Talon fighter bomber. These make sense then to be present in a larger force I might field. The issue is, they count as Heretic Astartes units and really share nothing but the general 'Chaos' Keyword with my Knights - in fact, pretty much nothing does apart from two infantry HQ choices.

 

My idea to tie things together then is this; I plan to convert a number of Skitarii (I have a bunch of these models spare) to act as cultists on the table top. I have this brain-fart about cultists who have been *ahem* 'blessed' by Nurgle through their association with Chaos. Seeing various limbs start to decay, fall off, and other fun forms of Papa Nurgles affection, I wondered if a solution for someone in that position would be to try and bargain with a Hell Forge to have your rotting bits replaced with bionic bits - much as is done with Skitarii. (Of course, they find out down the line that instead of rot, they rust and corrode and are no better off, but it makes things far more fun for me in terms of painting and converting - I love heavy weathering).

 

These unfortunates then become cheap and fairly decent basic 'retainer' style troops for my Knight House, and the general theme and concept allows me to reach quite far into the wider Chaos infantry range if I choose to later.

Having a Mark of Nurgle works great on the table top for me too, as if I were to have a 'rusty' Sorcerer, I can ramp up some of the negative to hit modifiers on my flyers and the like (up to about -3, if my theory-fu is strong), allowing somewhat normally fragile units some staying power.

 

Anyhow, the intention is really to use this thread as something of a hobby journal, and a fun place to discuss and share ideas on some of the fluff I'm drawing from, as well as hopefully get some painting and conversion pointers from you good folk, as it's quite different from anything I've done before.

 

With no more ado, here are some (hopefully not too terrible) pieces of eye candy of my starting point (note, my two standard Knights are currently with the Hellwrights - apologies!):

Edited May 5, 2018 by Stray

[Stray]

http://i563.photobucket.com/albums/ss78/tcgfade0ut/Mal%201_zpsh3y1tciy.jpg

 

 

 

http://i563.photobucket.com/albums/ss78/tcgfade0ut/Mal%204_zpsepdlo1wc.jpg

 

 

 

http://i563.photobucket.com/albums/ss78/tcgfade0ut/Mal%205_zpsdhlfss9m.jpg

 

 

 

http://i563.photobucket.com/albums/ss78/tcgfade0ut/Mal%202_zpsijxgz0sz.jpg

[Magos Takatus]

Looking good! Very neatly painted. I look forward to seeing the rusty Skitarri cultists. :)

[Stray]

Thank you! The Lancer I've never been all that happy with in truth. I bought it second hand online and though reasonably cheap, it was a particularly poor cast unfortunately so I've had my suspicions about whether it may be a recast. You can see one or two of the nastier areas in the photo that were just beyond my ability with greenstuff etc to fix entirely.

 

Ah well, you live and learn :)

[walter h]

Well, you might have lucked out with the purchase,as it looks as if it had repairs made. Interesting choice in F.W, . I will look in every now ,and then .

I cannot come up with what chaos Marine faction chooses metal over flesh ,but there would be your tie in.

[Trixie]

Looking good so far mate, whilst I am currently slowly working through my 30k Alpha Legion project I already have a whole bunch of robots and knights hoarded up for an allied contingent of Taghmata Xana and Malinax knights.

 

In particular I love the red and black chequered pattern over the bone armour plates, this was something I had considered in my own mind for my knight heraldry and to see it done and looking very good is most reassuring.

 

I look forward to seeing more from this !

[Trixie]

Another thing I forgot to mention is some fluff hints about Malinax, it was mentioned they were an 'extant' knight house originally called Malin-Qatlu, implying they were survivors of some previous war/disaster. When Xana II officially joins the Imperium of Man part of the agreement is they reorganise their military to someform that the Imperium can recognise and provide a home and new knight suits for the Malin-Qatlu bloodline. The renamed house of Malinax is the result.

 

This leads to the interesting idea that possibly Malinax is not even native or local to the Xana region and perhaps were the remnants of a ruined world that were picked up or rescued by a Great Crusade Fleet and presented to Xana II in an effort to rebuild the house. A knight bloodline is a precious resource and one to be reused when possible as their very genetic makeup allows them a  higher chance to complete and survive the knight bonding rituals, and it would make sense that rehoming and rebuilding a knight house would be a relatively high priority issue for an Imperium hungry for resources and manpower to continue the crusade.

 

Anyway enough ranting, what I am trying to say is that if one follows this path of reasonably logical fluff, the creative doors are now wide open to explore and create the history of Malinax before they joined Xana II.

[Stray]

Yes, I'd read something very similar Trixie. House Malinax does seem to have existed (at least in terms of its ruling blood line) before being based on Xana. Details are a little thin on the ground past that, and possibly contradictory too... I noticed in one instance that mention is made of the scorpion being the existing symbol of the Malin-Qatlu bloodline and that the founding of House Malinax added the triple tail, but that seems exceedingly odd given that it's used across the armed forces of Xana itself? It seems to have more of an association with the Forge World, unless both were simply coincidentally using a scorpion device? (That, or Scoria simply thought after seeing it hell, scorpions are cool! Add more tails and paint that on everything. Also, build me some scorpion legs stat!)

 

Interesting stuff either way :). It's great that we have some reasonably fleshed out fluff to play about with, yet some creative freedom to head canon the Houses pre-history.

[Trixie]

Aye there is some contradictory stuff to do with the scorpy logo, these things shouldn't matter but they nag in the back of my mind endlessly :D. 

I am willing to ignore though and let contradictions exist just as long as I can use that awesome logo.....red scorps got nothing on Xana !

 

When I eventually build mine they will be in their pre heresy style, thinking Rangdan Xenocide era. Just a bunch of robots and knights with a few secrets, not the full on chaos worshipping, world transporting, very naughty boys (and girls) that they would eventually become. Quite a few posters on this site have made excellent use of the robogear spider tank legs, to add a suitable arachnid/scorpid look to their Xana units, deffo worth checking out if you can't wait for the Scoria release.

[Stray]

Nice! I've pre-cannabalised an Onager for it's legs having had a similar thought, so will absolutely have a look at how some of the others on here have tackled that concept. Thanks Trixie!

 

I've also been thinking about Armigers today. They're such great little models, but for the most part everyone seems very disappointed with their rules vs their cost. Right now, there's no option for me to use them anyway without a rules update for Renegade Knights.

 

However, what I could do, is potentially convert some Armigers to more closely resemble Decimator Daemon engines, and use the Decimator rules. They're somewhat similar though slower (10" compared to 14") and cheaper units, but can benefit from a weapon combo that allows for 24" Assault 4D3 auto wounding attacks which cause a mortal wound per hit... That's a LOT more attractive to me than what the Armigers have going for them right now, and we can go pretty crazy with the conversions.

[Stray]

This is a work in progress 'test miniature' I've been working on casually for a couple of days. (I'm swiftly discovering that I'm pretty out of practice painting small miniatures like this, I've been doing Knights for too long it seems!)

 

It's been interesting as I've never done much in the way of heavy conversion work. In this case, the base miniature was an Engineseer I had spare. The face was removed and replaced with a skull from from another kit which was sliced up and modified some. Green stuff extends the original hood so it covers the skull.

 

I'll get some side and back views so it's more visible, but I've also removed the back piece, and modified that with a number of additional mechadendrites which were modeled from scratch. Some more organic 'tentacle' growths have been added to the opposite side.

 

Mostly it's a matter now of trying various corrosion effects that I use commonly on Knights, to see what works on a smaller scale.

 

If he turns out 'okay', I might keep him for use as a Hellwright or similar.

 

 

http://i563.photobucket.com/albums/ss78/tcgfade0ut/WIN_20180511_14_50_50_Pro_zpsdwmktqvl.jpg

[Magos Takatus]

Nice job. The conversion is subtle but it makes the model pretty creepy. I think it's the fact that it has hollow eye sockets instead of augmetic replacements. 

[Stray]

Hehe, cheers buddy. It was totally deliberate and not merely because that's what I pulled out of my unimpressive bits box ;)

 

I figure a slightly more 'diabolic' look could work for someone from a Hell forge though. You be the judge :)

[WarriorFish]

The bone colour you have is lovely, and the other colours complement it nicely to make it look even better. Add in the various details and the models don't pop they explode - excellent work!

[Trixie]

Lovely conversion

[Guardbuddy]

Absolutely gorgeous.  May I ask what you used for the bone color?  I am struggling to make it look just right on the Xana stuff I am currently painting.

[Stray]

Sure Guard, and thank you!

 

I think I posted a complete rundown of how I paint mine on Charlo's topic? It should be there with a picture of my Atrapos.

 

The quick answer just for the bone though is pretty simple. Basically I just base coat with Zandri Dust, then layer over that entirely with Karak Stone. Highlights are Terminatus Stone.

I tried a few different things prior to that myself and wasn't happy with any of them - it's definitely given me my best results, and it's nice and simple to paint. Hope it helps!

Edited May 13, 2018 by Stray

[Guardbuddy]

Sure Guard, and thank you!

 

I think I posted a complete rundown of how I paint mine on Charlo's topic? It should be there with a picture of my Atrapos.

 

The quick answer just for the bone though is pretty simple. Basically I just base coat with Zandri Dust, then layer over that entirely with Karak Stone. Highlights are Terminatus Stone.

I tried a few different things prior to that myself and wasn't happy with any of them - it's definitely given me my best results, and it's nice and simple to paint. Hope it helps!

Thank you so much!  It is much appreciated.  I'll try it out soon, hoping it goes well.  

[Stray]

Order the first part of my fluffy support force this week and had it arrive a few moments ago.

 

My god, this thing is HUGE!

 

This is a Hell Talon, part of the Eyrine cult forces which Xana's forges are directly responsible for designing and producing in fluff.

 

To give you an idea of the size, next to it is the chassis of a Cerastus Knight, which is itself considerably bigger than a standard Knight...

 

http://i563.photobucket.com/albums/ss78/tcgfade0ut/WIN_20180519_12_59_58_Pro_zpss5msupv9.jpg

 

I know right? O.o

[Trixie]

Are those Xana pattern pyjamas on display in that picture ? Heretic.

[Stray]

Haha! It's clearly the official Xana II tartan yes :P

 

(I need to get some jammies with a three tailed scorpion on for sure).

[Stray]

Just completed a Knight Castigator. 

 

I've stuck with some of the red accents I used on the Lancer to... I dunno, add a bit more pageantry? (Is that the right word here?) to the less 'Mechanicum' inspired Knights. I think it breaks things up a little while still being fluffy (check out named Knight Itzilnan in the fluff), and maybe adds a little more character?

 

You be the judge

 

 

http://i563.photobucket.com/albums/ss78/tcgfade0ut/unnamed3_zps0njo9llb.jpg

[Charlo]

Like it dude!

 

I was considering doing some red panels on mine to break them up a little, but I was thinking more deeper Khorne Red, however yours look ace.

[Stray]

Like it dude!

 

I was considering doing some red panels on mine to break them up a little, but I was thinking more deeper Khorne Red, however yours look ace.

 

Thanks Charlo.

 

The red panels on the Castigator do look lighter then the Lancer. I'm not sure if it's due to not shading them as much, or whether I used straight Mephiston red on the Lancer O.o. 

 

I might shade a little heavier as yet and just take it back a little.

[Magos Takatus]

That Castigator looks badass! I need to start working on mine sometime, but I'd rather work on my plastic knight first to get some practice first. Do you have any tips for painting and/or assembling this beast?