Dryw, Renegades and a Bit of Cheese...

I imagine it’s time I provided a bit of insight into the author.


The crafting aspect of 40K is just as enjoyable to me as the game itself.  Coming from a long and undistinguished career of military diorama modeling, my 40K end results tend towards more subtle & dingy/less flashy colors. I spend way too much time on each model/scenery piece, and I avoid Cool Mini or Not as the disgusting amount of skill some of those guys possess makes me weep.


I only play friendly ‘home’ matches.  One too many temper-tantrum-getting-screamed-at-who-needs-basic-hygiene bad experiences in a LGS pushed me out of that arena for good.   I much prefer a regular group of players who never get wrapped around the axle about rule interpretations or that extra 1/16th of an inch the Carnifex may have moved.  I’m a crotchety old curmudgeon, and just don’t have a whole lot of patience for that sort of garbage in my favorite pastime.  So to ensure that sort of environment, I built a 4’x8’ monstrosity in my rec room and once or twice a month the gang gets together and tosses dice.  I’d have it no other way.



As for armies themselves, I am invariably drawn to the weird, the one-off, the kooky, and the just plain odd.  Coolness factor ranks high, even if whatever it is doesn’t necessarily work very well or even reliably.  The few times it _does_ work are worth the pain, and getting a good laugh out of it is a plus.  I run four armies exclusively:  Renegade Marines, Orks, Tryanids, and Kroot Mercenaries.  The Orks and ‘Nids are relatively sane/vanilla straightforward builds and are great when I am in a smash-and-grab mood.  The Kroot Mercs? Well, they lose…  a lot.  But they’re damn fun to play (albeit a massive pain in the ass to assemble).



The Renegades… need a bit of explanation.  Not excusing, mind you… just explanation (read more link below).

Striving to deviate from the norm, I built the Renegades around a premise of “outlaw, but not Chaos”, and I chose the 5th ed CSM because I wanted power armor without the itchy guilt of 5th ed SM codex munchkinism (my humble opinion).  Soul Drinkers had been done to death and removing all the Chaos from CSM turns them into, well… cupcakes.  So now what?  Counts-as seemed the logical answer.  My regular game-mates wouldn’t take issue with it so long as it was reasonable, so it was a win-win.  Or so I thought. This became one hell of a rabbit hole.

I wanted cult Noise Marine counts-as, so combat drugs (‘Prime’) and an advanced prototype bolt rifle (MK. VII-x) found in some abandoned AdMech facility on a forgotten moon.  Ok so far, if a bit cheesy... but doable.  Doom Siren on the Aspiring Champion? Drop in another piece of archeotech with a fluff background.  Ok… we’re really stretching (have snapped?) the limits of believability with the archeotech stuff now.  Then came the ‘Berserkers’…

The background I created for these renegades indicates the cadre is dying.  Losses are not replaced and they are down to a couple hundred Marines, if even that many.  So I had this ‘brilliant’ idea (note the quotes) that to supplement their forces, the Renegades found… you guessed it… archeotech automatons to fight for them.  I giddily went about converting five Necron warriors… all brass and silver.  Weathering and such.  They turned out beautifully if I do say so myself.  And viola’!  Berserkers!


So then I converted a Heavy Destroyer body to a counts-as Chaos Spawn…

…and then I got my neurosis under control, battled the munchkin daemons fighting for control of my soul, and stopped myself.



It works, this hodge-podge pseudo-cheese Renegade Marine army I’ve built from harvested body parts, stolen from fresh graves in the dead of night.  And it’s actually not quite as goofy as I’ve made it all sound.  I get compliments on the models all the time, and none of my match-mates ever have an issue facing them down in a game.  These renegades are my guilty pleasure, and I’d rather chew off my own arm than get rid of them. Suffice to say, the army would never pass tournament muster.



Then again… that particular fact matters to me not at all.