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.

Metal or Plastic or Finecast or?

Which is best?

The answer is that there isn't any best. It comes down to a subjective choice of what the individual modeller prefers. At my local (independent) store some preferred plastics while here at Artificer's Workshop metal minis are the preferred option. In a sense this post is academic as metal is on the way out as far as games workshop is concerned. And to be fair and impartial the quality of the latest plastic releases have been superb. No doubt everyone has their own preferences but here the plastic Grey Knight Terminators are recognised as superb. 

(Why does blogger insist on american spelling when american english is more and more infiltrated by britishisms these days - a bit like the french hatred for franglais, see recognised. By the way I know the answer - rhetorical question directed at blogger.)

Back to topic. The future as far as metal goes is undoubtedly finecast. Here despite reservations identified in previous blogs it is recognised (that "misspelled" word again) that this is the future. Current problems will doubtless be ironed out.

The question posed on this blog is really what do you prefer to play with on the table top. The answer here is metal minis - hence the focus on Sister of Battle and Steel Legion and Bob Olley Rogue Trader era minis. Why because they are heavier and subjectively seem more substantial when placed on the table. Plastic minis here and there are definitely plenty of them often have a coin glued inside their GW base to give more weight when deploying on the table. Does anyone else do this? Does it produce more wins on the table top - probably. Try and see.    

Steel Legion First Platoon

Imperial Guard allies for the Sisters of Battle. 

The first platoon has been completed.

The design used for this platoon is for assault. Hence no heavy weapons, all assault weapons with grenade launchers and the sergeants having plasma pistols to provide a little bit more bite. Two power weapons with the commissar and the platoon officer.

Platoon Command Squad

1st Squad

2nd Squad

Both Sergeants are minor conversions, replacing the rotting Ork head hand with a hand with a plasma pistol hand. One plasma pistol is Forgeworld. The other is a combination of bits from the scrap box glued to a laspistol but.  The Ork head had to go as the Sisters of Battle would not approve.

Why do I like 40k and not flames of war?

The Steel Legion has not been sitting still. The second command squad has been completed. This squad is armed to provide plasma support plus a medic to deal with those inevitable nasty plasma burns. The next project is the third command squad, armed to support assaults, and after that it's the troops squads.








Admiral Drax's post 334, why I like flames of war set us thinking. As a consequence the question why do I like 40k and Warhammer was considered? A post from "Dont Throw A 1" around the same time was also of interest:- Dux Bellorum. In this post the virtues of Dux Bellorum (Arthurian) wargame rules were extolled (Dux Bellorum is available from amazon). After reading the post and the reviews on the Amazon site Dux Bellorum was duly ordered. Why? The answer to that and the title question is in my response to a comment which referred to a model as a little man, which was, "It's not a man, its made of metal and plastic and its not alive thankfully".

For this workshop abstract and fantasy is easier to relate to for wargaming - 40k or fantasy or Arthurian is comfortable but flames of war is not as it relates to a reality which although cleaned up on the table top, is not in history. These comments are clearly not analysis of the relative costs of the different systems of the playablity of rules systems.