Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I was unsure where to put this so please correct me if its in the wrong place.
Basicly 2 years ago i started playing 40k, i used a friends space marines and though i thought they had potential i found them a bit run of the mill. So i started a necron army and for about a year i was happy, i had built up a large necron force and played regularly. But after a while the limited models became tiresome for me, i designed many conversions before discovering i didnt have enough money. So i took a break from 40k for about a year. Recently i heard the 5th ed was coming so i decided it was time to rejoin the world of the 41st century.

I dont want to repeat my mistakes and instead of just continuing necrons i decided to try out another army, so i looked around for an army with alot of room for customization that still has an undead feel to it. Obviously i found nothing in 40k so i tried fantasy. While hauling through the fantasy army lists i noticed alot of parralels, the tomb kings were ALOT like necrons, wood elves reminded me of the tau, high and dark elves seemed to be the eldar and dark eldar to me. Then i came across the vampire counts, they were perfect for me. So i went down to my local GW shop and spoke to the dudes there about it. They explained the fantasy rules and quite frankly i found them damn confusing.

So i was torn, the customization and undeath of the vampire counts? or the reliable and non-confusing 40k?

Then it hit me. Why not both? i began to write a backstory and filled in the gaps, i wanted to use space marines gone bad but without chaos. I also wanted a futuristic, cybernetic undead feel like the necrons had. so i came up with a very short background story:

On the planet of Necros 4 a bloody war had waged for centuries, the names of the 2 sides have long been forgotten but what we do know is that one side developed a swarm of nanobots. These nanobots replicated like a bacterium and soon infected the entire planet. The emperor of the opposition made a grave choice, he wiped out all sentient life on the planet in an attempt to cut off the infection. To a degree this worked and the nanobots had no prey thus dying out. But one unit of the nanobot swarm was ingested by local fauna, after discovering a suitable habitat inside the animal the nanobot reproduced a new model, one that merely lived inside the blood of animals.

Hundreds of years later a splinter of the blood drinkers chapter came across the planet and received orders to explore it. As par usual the blood of the local fauna was drunk by the marines and thus the nanobots were reintroduced to a sentient host. But these hosts were like no other. The nanobots were taken right to the omophagea where the space marines bodies attempted to absorb them, this resulted in a melding of the nanobots and the blood cells of the marine. They became bed ridden as the nanobots reconstructed every cell in the marines bodies until each and every cell had become a fully functioning piece of cyber-organic machinery. The nanobots cannibalized the power armour of the marines, turning its complex alloys and wires into a biomechanical mesh that was just as strong and even more complex. As the apothecaries watched in horror the marines became so much more than just space marines. They became the first of the Vampryn.

The nanobots spread from the original infected marines to the apothecaries and then onto the rest of the group residing on the planet. the Vampryn waited patiently on Necros 4 , converting all who dared step upon its infected soil.

what do you think guys?

well isnt this the popular topic

It's only been here for 3 hours. What do you expect?

touche, but then again it doesnt take long to read and post on a topic does it

I like this fluff, it's inventive and should give plenty of modelling opportunities. The big question is whether you'll want to field this chapter from the Imperial Marine dex or C:CSM. As the fluff is so unique I don't see anybody complaining about you fielding your "loyalists" as a Chaos list.

I like tha idee I woud youse SM (loyal ).
don't think any one whoud complain

that is exactly what i was thinking lordhat but it is a hard choice to make. if i counted as a loyalist legion i would gain more tech (enphisising the whole cyborg aspect) but if i counted as a CSM legion i would have the whole mutation thing to use so i can make realy extreme conversions.

ill just see what the majority says

Hi

I like the idea, it's old but still n1.
check out

http://www.flesheaters.net/

hell I'm drunk

extreemer version of the iron hand chapter

corpsesarefun wrote:if i counted as a loyalist legion i would gain more tech (enphisising the whole cyborg aspect) but if i counted as a CSM legion i would have the whole mutation thing to use so i can make realy extreme conversions.

Or you could use some stuff like (from the rumours) special characters that allow bikes as troops for your nano-technology. Bikes could become wings, longer legs, anti-grav gizmos, tracks, or wheels instead of standard legs. That would cover nano-bots of a lot of varieties. Weapon upgrades (and whatever will be left over of the armoury) can be represented as some sort of new nano-technology too. the same goes for the rest of the special rules. A bit like tyranid biomorphs, just with nano-technology.

The only thing to consider would be to have some consistency in your "counts as" army so the other player can infer (more or less) easily what is going on with all your conversion (with some little explanation before the game starts).

Seems like plague marines would be the way to go. Feel no pain could count as bionics. Extra toughness/harder to kill because they're undead. The bare berzerker heads have fangs and look vampirish. You could make the HQ units your vampire lords and your troops into their zombie minions. This starting to sound pretty cool!

rbb i was thinking along those lines, for the HQ and another elite units i was going to base them on CSM or SM and for the troops i was going to use IG.

backstory is:
after the original creation (the most powerful ones) a few groups of IG were sent to see what happened to the marines on necros 4. obviously they were captured and converted.

i will probably count them as fleshtearers (thanks for the link flarack) or plauge marines but im still not sure which

ok guys im going for plauge marines as the base for the elite troops and IG as a base for the standard troops.

and how about the apothecaries became the equivilent of the necromancers, spreading a more extreme breed of the nanobots onto a battlefeild after a victory and raising the corpses as shells for the nanobots to control. before their infection they kept things alive, now post infection they carry on this art, in an incredably perverse manner

I think you should go more the route of Iron Hands... the leaders of the chapter wanted to embrace the Machine God/Omnishah in all his glory. It's more interesting to me to take an existing chapter as a template and simply make them more sinister to create a new and evil one. I would also drop the vampire part as it doesn't fit with the cyber theme... unless you put some more work into your fluff.

G

Green Blow Fly wrote:I think you should go more the route of Iron Hands... the leaders of the chapter wanted to embrace the Machine God/Omnishah in all his glory. It's more interesting to me to take an existing chapter as a template and simply make them more sinister to create a new and evil one. I would also drop the vampire part as it doesn't fit with the cyber theme... unless you put some more work into your fluff.

G

what I sad looks like iron hand but extremer

Green Blow Fly wrote:I think you should go more the route of Iron Hands... the leaders of the chapter wanted to embrace the Machine God/Omnishah in all his glory. It's more interesting to me to take an existing chapter as a template and simply make them more sinister to create a new and evil one. I would also drop the vampire part as it doesn't fit with the cyber theme... unless you put some more work into your fluff.

G

well the reason i chose the blood drinkers is it fits in with my existing fluff, the iron hands don't realy tend to drink blood. and i am taking an existing chapter and making it more sinister, the blood drinkers are a subsection of the blood angels i do believe. but anyway i guess i shall have to get working on better fluff because i realy want to keep the whole vampyrey aspect in this.

Use the blood angles PDF from the GW website.

thanks red lives, i have an idea on how to encorperate an undead/blooddrinking aspect to the fluff.

while the nanbobot components of the vampryns cells are nigh on indestructable the organic components still decay and die, and thus must be continuously replaced by consuming the bodies of other life forms. if a vampryn does not feed its physical bodies wastes away into a mere skeleton animated by a thin layer of nanobots covering its surface.

You have another option...

Paint them in an original scheme and flip-flop to your heart's content.

Want to play SM this week? Okay.
Want to play CSM? Okay.
With just a few extra pieces, you could build a nice army that would be quite versatile.

Sure, some things wouldn't translate well... a Defiler, for example... So? Just don't use it when you play as CSM.


Eric

that is a very good idea, while playing SM i just wouldnt use the defiler. i think i will do that. thanks

You named your homeworld after me! thanks! When do I get the royalty check?

Actually I was thinking of a similar idea for my chaos army.. I just wanted to paint them in something besides black and gold and gray like I seem to always do, so I went with a bleached bone color scheme.. for the fluff milling around in my head, they're mostly an undivided army more anti-imperium than full-fledged chaos..

they started out as keepers of a tomb world that found itself infested with nids.. The marines were able to fight it off but the populace was more or less decimated.. then the chapter master was sad that everyone died and dabbled in dark arts to bring em back to life, in service to him of course. so he became a necromancer of sorts using the power of chaos to reanimate people, even his dead marine buddies. Then the Inquisition found out and got pissed, so they declared the world Exterminimitilious or however you spell it. Then the marines were like "Ha! You can't kill us, we're already dead!". So the marines, in turn, got even more pissed and started killing the inquisition and now they hate the imperium because they're not allowed to bring dead people back to life anymore.



now back on topic... the plague marine idea is a good one. They're so tough. Yeah, they're pricey but worth every point. But being as the metals are kind of pricey I would go with plastics and do some converting. You don't have to greenstuff beer bellies on em with intestines hanging out.. Just paint em to look dirty and rusted.

Or you could try maybe 2 units of real plague marines, and then the rest be plastic chaos marines with the mark of nurgle. You'll save some points and some cash that way.

But then, also keep in mind the new marine book will be out soon. I'm sure there will be some great ideas in there where you can build something based on a loyalist list, with a darker backstory.

You could take plastic csm or regular sm parts and mix with zombie parts. Or maybe use the archive Iron Hands cyborg parts. Servitors as vampire thralls?

Keep in mind the BA gene-seed allows their marines to live the longest, the BA currently have the oldest chapter master he is over 1,000 years old!!! And with plastic possessed now available the conversions can be endless.

thanks for all the support guys, i think i will use the servitor idea. the possessed parts could also be usefull in giving them a mutated look, the iron hands/techmarine parts will be good for the whole cyborg look.

im also planning on using some WHFB skeletons and convertingly slightly to portray a vampryn who has gone for too long without feeding (that way i have 2 different "flavours" of basic troop to use for the whole counts as rule, IG based vampryn and starved vampryn)

not much happenning today