Steel Legion Sergeants with Orks Head

There are only 2 Steel Legion Sergeant minis. Neither are particularly satisfactory. One is static pointing his laspistol and chain sword, while the other waves a severed Orks head. The static sergeant has been useful for heavy and assault weapons conversions as seen in my previous posts about meltaguns and heavy flamers for the Steel Legion. The Orks head Sergeant is OK but looks a bit out of context when fighting anything but Orks. You have to ask why would someone want to wave an Orks head at Chaos or Dark Eldar and why would they care. It would probably smell as well. So here are 3 conversions from this Sergeant. The Orky arm is sawn off at the shoulder and a new arm substituted with weapon of choice.  When converting the other sergeant to assault weapons etc there is usually a spare right arm. Simple and effective.

Steel Legion 2nd Platoon 1st Squad and Bane Wolf

 This week has seen more work on the Steel Legion, with the second platoon 1st squad completed. Only one more squad to do and that will be all the core troops choices. Originally a 3rd platoon was part of the over all plan but a recent post on Faeit 212 : "The Strength of Armour in 6th: Part 2" changed plans, hence the Devil Dog which will be the first of many tanks for this IG army. The Bane Wolf at the moment is unassembled, everything comes to bits apart from the basic hull assembly. This seems to make it easier to paint. At the moment it only has the base colours done. Next for the washes to hopefully produce a result such as on the old style Chimera below.

Steel Legion Missile Launcher Heavy Weapons Squad

The Steel Legion marches on. The latest off the production line is a missile launcher heavy weapons support squad pictured below. The second platoon is also coming on as is a Devil Dog and there is a mortar squad to do as well. After that who knows. Some more tanks I guess as the Steel Legion should be more mech than most IG.

Basing Evolution

Originally the finishing of bases for 40k minis was simple. Glue some sand on and paint green. The purpose of adding sand and painting was primarily to hide the connection between the mini and it's base, particularly for the metal models. Check out old White Dwarfs and see that some sand with goblin green and a yellow dry brush over was the standard way of finishing off the base, and allowing it to blend into the typically green playing surface. With the introduction of plastic minis things changed. The location of the mini on the base could change, no need for metal pins to fix the heavier model in place. It became easier to add bits to the base and glue the models feet on them to create greater dynamism of the models, fluff and game headology. Still many well painted minis out there don't even have that finish to their base. A bit of paint perhaps or not even painted at all. For simple basing now that 40k has gone all dark and gloomy browns or greys are commonly used. Really little change from before.


For fluff this lascannon steel legion team are squatting in the mud in the ash wastes of Armageddon. The charge pack is perched above the mud on a stone. The mud effect is made by painting liquid green stuff in a patch in the centre of the coarse sanded base

More intricate basing could be used to link models who are part of a team and add some dynamism to the base. Here the drug stim crazed missile launcher team are in the process of reloading the launcher while nearby a lasrifle has been embedded in the grass by its bayonet and a spare missile is stuck nose down into the ground. They seem to know what they are up to so perhaps the dice gods will give them a better than 50:50 chance of hitting their target.

Here another missile team squats behind some battle field wreckage. While cover for cover saves cannot be incorporated on a base perhaps the suggestion of a cover hugging squad might increase the chance of favourable save rolls? Or persuade an opponent to try for another target, forgetting that cover cannot be incorporated on to bases. For another bit of headology adding height to a minis base to make it appear more imposing or threatening might just draw fire or attention or otherwise disrupt an opponents thought processes to their disadvantage. Obviously think about how the verticaly enhanced character is to be deployed or all that attention might take them out the game early. Does basing influence players? It probably does subliminally. Is this another aspect of the metagame or is it a legal way of getting a slight advantage?

MathHammer vs chaos theory

The slippery fantasy of mathhammer is a crazy attempt to bend the random processes of probability to the will of the 40k gamer. Why should this be the case, especially as many players build their armies based on these arcane calculations? Basically the mathhammer player will have calculated given the toughness, weapons skill or ballistic skill that with so many models or with these or other upgrades the chance of a group of individual dice rolls getting a beneficial results is mathematically uprated. The assumption made in these mathematical systems is that probability smooths out over a certain number of dice rolls, say 20 or more rolls for a squad firing. This assumption is physically false in this universe at least. The rolling of dice is actually a self organising system, chaos theory. Each dice that is rolled has an individual probability or hitting a particular value, but the number of dice rolled at any one time does not influence the result on each individual dice. Self organising systems have specific characteristics which include the concept of avalanches. What this means for the game player is runs of good luck or more commonly runs of bad luck during the span of a game regardless of the mathhammer that has gone before. The averaging of dice rolls undoubtedly happens but only over the life span of the universe. Not over the span of a game of 40k. In the meantime dice rolls in individual games will defeat the odds again and again.

Mathhammer is therefore only a bit of headology that can give one or another player an advantage as long as they believe in mathhammer. At the end of the day a game of 40k pits on entity against another as does a battle pit one general against another.


There are undoubtedly other ways of applying a bit of headology to opponents quite legally through modelling, basing and playing skills.