Xenos on Crusade: Awakening the Tomb III

Hello everyone, Phaeron Tom here!

It has been a very busy weekend for my hobby with a massive amount of despruing, gluing, priming and starting to paint. As you might have already guessed, it was the Indomitus release weekend! This was a fantastic set, the rulebook looks great, and the build-up and planning for the Crusade has really excited me for the new edition of 40k (I barely played any 7th, and skipped all of 8th).

Indomitable!

Tim and I teamed up and bought a box each, allowing us to do a straight swap with Tim taking the Primaris forces from my box, and in return my legion's ranks were swelled with reinforcements taken from his set. With the hand-off complete I set to assembling the models with abandon! NOTE - my current approach has been to fully assemble one set, plus the 20 warriors and 12 scarabs from the second set; I'm leaving the rest

The coming blog post is really a quick run through of the models as I assembled them up to the point of priming. I will add a few notes in on the choices I made and plans for the rest of the models, but the focus here is assembly. That said, I've already begun painting things as I writer this post!

Overlord

This is a really cool model - very imposing - and the weapons certainly look like it will be making it in as warlord of my forces for the upcoming crusade (replacing the lord I currently have).

Skorpekh Lord

A brutal combat monster! I don't think I will run this HQ at the start of the crusade, but might look to bring it in later on depending how my forces fair. Rumours suggest that in the new Necron codex your leaders can succumb to the Destroyer curse so it might prove a useful model to have ready!

Plasmancer + Cryptothralls

This cryptek variant is quite cool; however, as I already have one in my initial crusade force I expect this character will wait in the wings. The littlest murder dustbins though... they are definitely going to feature as we venture onto the battlefield! It is likely that I will make use of the extras cryptothralls as soon as I can.

Royal Warden

This robot means business! The relic blaster is really cool and the ability to boost the warriors will definitely come in handy. I also think having a mid-tier "lieutenant" model is fantastic for when points/PL are tighter in smaller games.

Skorpekh Destroyers + Plasmocyte

These are a great addition to the Necron army, adding a much-needed close quarters punch unit. Once my requisition points start to flow these will be making their way into the legion as soon as possible.

The base sculpt of the Plasmocyte was converted a little to remove the wreckage the model was clambering over, I added a brass rod to allow it to float, then filled in between the legs with some extra pipes, tendrils and cables.

Warriors

These new push fit models are great. They go together really quickly and easily, with a really clever system for arms/gun that positions everything correctly. By the end of assembling 40 of them (20 flayers, 20 reapers) I had the entire process down to 48 minutes per 10!

I want to build my forces around a block of 20 warriors, then adding in a unit of 10 to ride in the Ghost Ark as the crusade progresses. In time I might look to get another 20 warriors with gauss flayers as a second mainstay unit.

Scarabs

I am really starting to love scarabs (see my last blog post!) and the Indomitus swarms are a great new take on the unit. I've taken the 12 bases from the two box sets and based 9 of them. The extra three were then glued onto the top of the an existing swarm to stack them up and add some volume. When I can get another 6 swarms I will do the same to complete the remaining bases.

No pictures here as I forgot to take one in my excitement! :D

Canoptek Reanimator

This towering monster is a really cool direction for the Necrons and I look forward to the Doomsday Stalker - real War of the Worlds vibes!

The push-fit and modelled base caused a little bit of frustration as I am not keen on the Imperial wreckage. Some serious cutting and trimming let to the model precariously balanced on just two limbs/fixing points, but I got round this instability by adding the scrap of the old warriors (along with weapon spares) to the base. My aim here is to make it appear the construct is moving forward, reanimating warriors as it goes!

I decided not to add the carapace onto the model at this stage, hence it not being in the picture below.

That is it for now! Hopefully I will be back next week with an update on my July progress for crusade preparations and some WIP shots of the Indomitus models!