Heresy & Heroes

The dust has settled, the swathes of compliments have come in, and I am a very happy chappy indeed having finished my Knight. But with a miniature you care about, getting the painting done is just the first step. I expect him to be long storied, and I expect the both of us to be able to share some war stories in the grim darkness of the not too far future. The next step on this path, involves coming up with some rules for a unique miniature who deserves some unique abilities on the tabletop.

Writing homebrew rules for miniatures is great fun, and committing them to paper (physical or digital), is a good way to get a sense of how the model will act on the battlefield. They also help to give it personality. There are a few ‘dos and don’ts’ that are worth observing, and I’m listing them below. They’re not hard and fast, but I find that these help keep things sensible. Then, I’ll add my first draft of this big Knight’s rules below…

Do:

• …playtest your creation.

You don’t need to take on every possible opposition unit out there. Nor do you have to ‘mathhammer’ every aspect of your new creation. If you’ve got a mate or two who are relaxed and up for it enough, take your new unit into a couple of battles with them and see how it performs. If it’s indestructible and destroying entire formations every turn, you might have gone too far, but this will be apparent very early on. Same goes for if it’s dying straight away or running from the board. If you’re paying lots of points for something, remember that it should be putting out some serious damage too, but if you’ve made it cheaper, you should be forfeiting something. That leads us too…

• …get your points costing as right as you can.

It’s not an exact science. GW have never got it 100% right, though (and I acknowledge that depending on your faction of choice, this may be somewhat contentious) they are heading slowly in a better direction with recent books and faqs. Anyway, try and be fair. I think I’ve made Dios Toros a little better than a Palladin overall, while sacrificing a couple of things, so I’ve made him a little more expensive. A few 1-on-1 games against another knight with a standard profile might help work out if this is true, though again, it’s not going to be exact.

• …add a little fluff.

For example, I’ve given my Knight three things that I think are particularly fluffy. I’ve given him hatred (Imperial Knights), I’ve given him a suitable sonic weapon, and I’ve upped his initiative. Anyone familiar with Slaaneshi units will understand the latter two, while my own fluff has dictated the first of those rules. If it makes him too OP, I can always tone it down a bit.

• …know your role.

Is your new unit going to be there to kill lots of basic troops, vehicles, elite units or real monsters. Will it have more of an assault role, or will it hang back? Will it grant boons to other units in your force, or will it passively blight those of your opponent? All of these things and more should all be considered, and some units are good at doing several of these things. Word of warning though – almost nothing provides all things to all men (or roughly man-shaped creatures), so be selective.

Don’t:

• …make these rules for a tournament.

Put simply, you almost certainly won’t be allowed to use them. I think I could probably get away with fielding Dios Toros as a Paladin, but then I don’t need to because I don’t play tournaments. Just be aware that these rules are for friendly games.

• …ignore the fluff.

It can be tempting. You’re making something else up and you know that something has a really cool rule and you want to use it, and you can always try and justify it but don’t milk it. If I had gone this direction, this Knight would have been armed with a Serpent Shield and Helfrost Cannon. By all means invent, but don’t plagiarise for the sake of it.

• …spring this on your opponent, even in a friendly game.

Pretty basic stuff really. If you’re taking this to a game, let your opponent know before hand that you have a homebrew and make sure they’re happy taking it on. If not, be a man about it and play by the book-written rules. Simple as that.

That’s about it really. If you do all of that, you’ll find yourself in a good place and making up your own rules should always be loads of fun. I’m looking forward to pitting the big pink guy against his first opponents soon, so I’ll let you know how I get on. What do you think of the rules below though? Is the points cost about right? Did I miss something, or is something else OTT? Stick a comment below and let me know!

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Dios Toros (390pts)

Unit Type: Vehicle (Super-heavy Walker, Character)

Wargear: Heavy Stubber, Battery Cannon, Dread Siren, Tentacles, ion Shield

Ion Shield (as per rulebook)

Dread Siren:

The wailing screams of agony and ecstasy destroy the eardrums of any who might try and take on Dios Toros by getting too close. This high-powered doom siren also causes pinning test.

Battery Cannon:

Battery drums out its shots across its victims, armoured and non-armoured alike. This multi-barrelled cannon also causes pinning tests.

ion Shield (as per rulebook)

Mechatentacles:

The vast tendrils of the demonically possessed are adept at pulling even the heaviest armour apart. This weapon conveys an extra melee attack to Dios Toros, as represented in the above profile.

Special Rules:

Fear, Hammer of Wrath, Invincible Behemoth, Move Through Cover, Relentless, Smash, Strikedown, Hatred (Imperial Knights)

Hatred (Imperial Knights)

Dios Toros fell from the Emperor’s services long ago and regards the knightly houses that remained loyal to Terra as weaklings and cowards. Dios Toros has the special rule Hatred for all opposing Imperial Knights.

Gift of Slaanesh

She Who Thirsts has rewarded the daemon now piloting Dios Toros with preternatural quickness in combat. Dios Toros has +1 Initiative as represented in the above profile.

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COOL PS!

Another spot on GW’s best of the Flickr pool, as seen in the What’s New Today blog on their site. Dios Toros getting a bit more fame. 🙂

Working on my Knight has been great fun. It’s these big showpiece kits that everyone admires that make painting a huge amount of fun. It’s garnered me a lot of praise and pleasant comments and I couldn’t be more grateful for those or thrilled with the results themselves. I’m hoping to get the big lug finished this week so keep watching this space.

On the flip-side, I hate the great big, pink mess. It’s full of mistakes, there are mismatched bits, I put it together wrong and frankly, I am sick and tired of denying myself a social life so that I can sit down in front of the b*st*rd thing and paint even more pink.

Now, the above two paragraphs are an indicator of the dual emotions we feel when working on big projects. I know I’m not alone because several people have confirmed to me that they suffer from the same split-opinion issue when confronting their own large bits of work, be they armies or single models. From a single Brass Scorpion to a massive mob of ork boys, from Titan to tyranid hive fleet, big projects are big pressure and big payoff.

I don’t tend to work on too many big models. I’ve not knocked out a big kit since my Storm Raven – probably about 12 months ago. And that’s not quite on the same scale as a Knight. It’s a big model, but there are far fewer components and less detail too. So while I’m working on an army, the issues come up over a longer period of time, and I can associate a single 20mm base with the time I rage quit for the day, or a single tank with me stabbing myself with a craft knife. It all happens over a longer period of time and so I don’t notice it so much – the wins and losses are spread out over a season (to borrow a sports metaphor). With a single, big model though, that all gets compacted into one long set of sessions.

What’s more, I’m making this one hard for myself. Everything I’ve learned is going into this one. There’s the freehand (both patterns and illustration), the weathering, the blending, the metallic work, the highlighting, the edging, the converting, the use of green stuff… this model really does have all of my last three or four years of painting and converting knowledge in its details. I even look at specific bits and I know which previous projects contributed to them. The rusting metals from my Death Guard, the wires from Orks, the illustration from Mortifactors… it’s all in there.

And because of this, I have messed up all over the shop. Now, don’t get me wrong, I look at it and think I’ve done pretty well too, but I know where all the mistakes are, now hidden beneath corrections. There was the time I got superglue on an already painted area, the pattern that was supposed to look like one thing and didn’t so I had to try and rescue it to be something else. Then there’s the times where I didn’t use enough green stuff to build an area up, or the time where I put a craft knife through my finger (I do that a lot).

Because of all that, I am sick to death of this big, pink git. There are genuinely times where I have been tempted, if only for a split second, to throw the thing out of my window and watch a bus go over it, the miserable pile of plastic.

Of course I’m not going to do that. For one thing, that kit ain’t cheap. For another, I have poured my very Slaanesh-owned soul into this knight. It represents how far I’ve come from my earliest attempts at painting the Prince of Pleasure’s pinkish and purple praetors. I think it looks great and I’m giddy with anticipation to show it off, all done and finished.

But then again, I hate it.

Though I still love it.

Except I hate it.

And love it…

You see the issue, yes? Well, all I can say is that, very soon, it will be completed and ready to roll out onto the tabletop. What’s more, I’m almost sure that I will miss working on it, and happy as heck that I no longer have to. If you were looking for any deep and meaningful conclusion to this blog post, or a way to address and fix this confusing duplicity, you will be disappointed. But I didn’t write it for you. I penned all of this because I want you equally frustrated and happy hobbyists out there to know that it happens to all of us. You are not alone in your trials with these big projects. They end, and, if you’re lucky, and you work hard, and you eat all your vitamins, you love the finished result. Keep going and don’t let the b*st*rd grind you down.

I might work on a single Ork grot next. Or, even better, a single nurgling. It’s important to have something to look forward to.