Warhammer 40,000 - I judge a book by it’s cover, at least when it comes to miniatures. If something looks weird or slightly off with a new release I’ll typically pass. Which means I don’t necessarily look at the codex entry for such models because I pass them off as fugly or overcosted. When the seventh edition GSC book finally dropped I built almost my entire force from two boxes of Death Watch: Overkill that I picked up on discount. When I finally did pick up the five man box of Acolyte/Metamorphs all I built were the special and heavy weapons from the box because Overkill didn’t include any of them.
With the Eighth Edition book I’ve been trying to expand my collection with building block units. Having built a solid core that I’m happy with it’s now time to look at adding some units that might be able to fill a different role or be less CP dependent to pull off the tricks I need them too.
Having some extra bodies left after building all the Rock Saws I needed I decided to take a look at the other options the Acolyte kit could build. Not being familiar with the Tyranid Biomorphs I thought some of them were very odd and didn’t fit the look I was going for. After reading through the entry I settled on giving the unit double talons and a hand flamer on each model. Since the unit is limited to 10, I could easily put them in a truck and drive around dumping 10D6 auto hits on units. Not that strength 3 will wound much but the potential is there. The more impressive stat that these guys have is more Attacks, they start with 3 attacks per dude and 4 on the leader, 31 attacks hitting on 3’s wounding most things on 4’s. Swapping the rending claw for another talon takes the attacks to 5 per dude 6 on the leader bringing us up to 51 attacks and these 51 attacks now hit on 2’s thanks to the talons. That is some serious potential damage output.
If toughness 3 hordes are raining on your parade. This unit can tear things up. Cast Might From Beyond on them and pick the Twisted Helix trait you’re now looking at 61 attacks, hitting on 2’s wounding on 2’s that should mulch through those bodies fairly reliably.
Right now these guys are in a “playable paint stage” my goal with my own stuff it to quickly paint it to a minimal tabletop standard so everything looks cohesive, once I have a lull in commissions I’ll go in and paint these guys to my personal standard and really get the colors to pop on the table.
