Boyadventurer

And I think the Marksman is Scythes of the Emperor and the Gunner is Mortifactors

Boy, it was a busy March and start to April. I made some good progress but it was a slow start. I do really like the way the black has come out, but it is really tough to photograph! I think once some more colour is picked out, they'll stand out a little more. My finals are done at the end of this week and I'll be able to go full steam on the project then.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/en-gb/articles/or72z0uw/every-reveal-from-the-warhammer-preview-show-at-adepticon-2025/

Eliminator (Raptors): This was originally done before the new edition of KT and was the souped up Intercessors Warrior with the scope and special rounds wargear. It was basically just the Lieutenant with Stalker Bolt Rifle model (which I loved) with the left arm replaced with an assault intercessor one (still holding the half helmet in hand) and the cloak. It made sense to upgrade this one to the Eliminator with the new ruleset. I know it's not in phobos armour, but I wanted to keep the same base model and replicate the cool pose from the Horus Heresy Vigilator model. There was never any doubting this guy being from the Raptors. Heavy Intercessor Gunner (Sons of Medusa): Also would have been a good contestant for an Imperial Fist successor but I had the Feirros model kicking around and figured that is a fitting base. Had to get some bionic arms on him of course.

Intercessor Gunner (Excoriators): I loved the Jovan model, but the battle damage makes it look out of place in an army of regular models. But what better chapter to use for this piece than the Excoriators who keep any cosmetic damage to their armour as battle scars! I also figured between the surveying/assessing pose, and the powerful bolter, a son of Dorn would make the best Intercessor Gunner. Assault Intercessor Warrior (White Scars): I love the action in the Titus model, but the pose feels more at home with one of the savager chapters. A Space Wolf would have been a good choice here too, but I do enjoy the White Scars. Intercessor Warrior (Howling Griffons): An homage to old metal Veteran Sergeant mini from the Command Squad kit.

Intercessor Sergeant K'shar (Salamanders): This was the first of the kitbashes I started for this kill team. Classic use of the old Black Ark Corsairs cloak for a Salamanders marine. I originally liked this kitbash with the OG tacticus Captain because it gave the impression of being taller than most other marine models... Except now most of my other models in this squad have a foot on a tactical rock or something, so he doesn't look as imposing now. Assault Intercessor Grenadier (Angels Vermillion): Pretty basic kitbash of the Lt Tolmeron model. I made the shoulder for this one myself by carefully slicing off the skull from a sergeant helmet and adding it to the blood drop. I just recently replaced the head with a new one from the new BA upgrade kit. It had the old blood drop helmet on it before. It just felt weird for it to be only member of the squad with a helmet on (this ain't the Angels Sanguine here, amirite?).

This will be my WIP thread for Knives in the Shadow 2025 challenge. I've had most of these kitbashes from the last edition but never got around to painting them since I hardly play lately. I added the heavy intercessor gunner and eliminator with the release of the new edition. I thought this would be a great chance to finally light some promethium under my butt and get some progress made on a project! I really struggled getting decent photos since they were already primed black. Hopefully as I add some colour, they will stand out a little more. I added tassets to all the models that didn't already have some on the base model. I also made sure to add the assault intercessor gauntlets on the other intercessors (and eliminator) to make the silver Deathwatch left arm look a little more special.

Was a little slow getting this together as I had some exams last week but here we go! I, Boyadventurer, vow to complete one Kill Team of the Angels of Death (Deathwatch), to be fully painted and based by the 31st May 2025, and to provide at least minimal fluff/background for them. May (the Emperor or whatever 40k deity you wish to swear by) curse me to darkness and ruination should I fail! It's been a long while since I've been active, just mostly haven't had time to get any games in over the past few years, but this was a good excuse to get me motivated again! I've been sitting on a couple of these conversions for a while now, but the eliminator and the heavy intercessor gunner are more recent pieces I did when the new version of the rules dropped. The link for my WIP thread is: I've saved a bunch of lore videos from The Rememberancer for these chapters to watch as I start working on them.

RIP Proteus Kill Team. Would have been nice to have even if it was half vets and half termies. Fortis Intercessors bolt rifles are lethal hits, S5, AP2!!

There's now been two cases of Primaris marines using the DW Veterans storm shield (the 9th ed Codex cover and this animation). Since GW is so adamant "if it's not a model, it doesn't exist" in every other case, this has been giving me hope for a few years now lol. Even a new upgrade sprue could do wonders after seeing how much they fit in to the newer ones (BT, DA, BA).

That giant Kastellan is so precious

Around 1 min in the dialog refers to "Damocles" and "Khiron". Are the Iron Snakes in the game??

Edit: Here's a pretty definitive pic, so I replaced the other ones I had just posted. Here is a reg Termie pad blue tacked on to the Leviathan terminator. The shoulderpads are lined up flush at the bottom (it doesn't look like it on the left side due to the curve of the underlaying pad). You can see the Leviathan shoulder pad is a little bigger all the way around. And in pic 2, tacked to the side, flush to the inside edge and bottom, the Lev pad is taller and sticks out a little more (but that is hidden behind the chapter icon). I think I might leave the terminators as is for now and hope one of the 3d printing places upscales their terminator pads a little. It sucks cause I just had 2 orders made specifically for Leviathan in mind. Everything else so far has been a nice match (Firstborn > Tacticus, Terminator > Gravis) that just assumed the trend would have continued,

IDK if it was mentioned in one of the Leviathan threads from before, but I figured I'd warn my fraters of the Watch especially, the shoulderpads on the Leviathan terminators are larger than the previous Terminator/Gravis pads. The molded-on pads sit a little higher on the shoulder itself, but even if you shave off the molded-on pad, you will need to shave down the actual shoulder a bit too to fit an older Termie pad on. See the pic, I'm holding up a DW termie pad from the upgrade sprue against one of the arms. You can see on the right side that the DW pad is flush against the shoulder, but on the left side the DW pad doesn't clear the shoulder. I haven't worked up the courage to actually take a knife to any of the arms yet and see how it looks overall, but I'm worried it might end up looking a little off with the rest of the scale overall. Just wanted to warn y'all before you get out the hobby knives.

**Edit: I was writing this the night before the points list came out. I didn't want to go back and rewrite everything. Clearly I've got more thoughts now that we've seen the points! ** I'm stepping out of a warp rift after being in the Mortal Realms for most of the last 3 years (This joke would have played better in the Grey Knights forum...) with 50+ 3d printed successor chapter shoulder pads and I'm ready to share my DW thoughts that no one asked for: - I too am surprised Infernus and Desolator marines are not included in the Fortis. Especially since missile launchers have been a random inclusion Maybe there's other units still coming for SM that would further shake up the KT structure so they left things relatively the same for now? - Losing blackshields hurt, but this edition is more about unit rules rather than individual models adding something, so unless they were going to make them a low level hero, there wasn't much of a place for them. My judiciar and company champ are modeled as blackshields, so I still have that flavour in there at least. - It's lame that Assault Intercessors are still one of the "special" options for a Fortis. They couldn't just make it 5+ Intercessors either with rifles or chainswords? (Also hoping the 4+ WS on the Assault Ints is a mistake). - Funny that, with everyone already complaining about vanilla Vanguard Vets, ours are like extra useless. - Losing combat squads REALLY sucks. That's all mostly poopooing on it. I do have some nice things to say too: - IDK why but I like how the *other* guys in the KTs are still referred to as the main guys (ie Intercessor with plasma incinerator). - They made the character-joining-a-KT aspect pretty easy. I could imagine it ending up a lot more convoluted. It's nice and fluffy for DW. - I kinda like SIA becoming strats that can be used across more units. Yeah it's silly that assault cannons or whatever are benefiting from it too, but it was also silly that they removed it from Intercessors too. - Lifting (most) transport restrictions is great. My Vets are on primaris bodies now so I just kind of erased the difference in my headcannon already. - I feel like they did do a pretty good job of simplifying things without causing a mess or too much of a shakeup like every other time they've reworked DW. *Okay post points update Mike here. I guess the stuff about Kill Team composition doesn't really matter now cause KTs kinda suck right? 100 points for 5 vets, vs 165 for 5 vets in a Proteus. LESS weapon options for the Proteus vets for some reason, all they GAIN as a bonus is getting the SIA strat across 2 KTs instead of one unit. I don't really see the benefit of KTs beside that. Even using the basic guys as ablative wounds for the Terminators/Eradiators/Eliminators/etc doesn't really seem viable since you can't cheap out the basic guys. I'm not horribly against the "wrap all options into one point cost" idea, but I just don't get why it's so much more expensive? A fully kitted proteus kill team (5 vets, 4 termies, 1 biker) should be 294 points, but costs 330. If KTs kept their individual unit's abilities (Hellblasters keeping shoot on death, etc) I can understand why they are charged a premium. But right now I'm just super confused.