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I've had an idea in my head for quite a few years regarding a Lost and the Damned army I would have loved to do. I pretty well destroyed the binding on my Eye of Terror codex when it was still legal reading, re-reading, planning, coming up with backstory, etc. However, at the time my painting and modeling abilities were... lacking (Some of my original Dark Eldar still had bits of sprue attached to the guns even.)

So, long story short, by the time I gained the confidence and ability to do a fully converted army, the rules had gone by the way. Every now and then I still wish I could have made the army, but couldn't find a nice fit for an army to do counts-as rules. Eventually I found what seems perfect to me, in the most strange of places, the Tyranid codex.

I understand that this may not work very well for some people, as Tyranids are so radically different from the various humanoid races, but these were my ideas and I'd like to see if anyone thinks they would work out.

Basic rules and justifications:
Synapse: This is the big one, but it sounds plausable to me at least. Everything synapse in the army is something so connected to chaos and the warp that it's inspiring to the crazed followers of the gods (Daemon prince, CSM Apostelary, hugely mutated mortals.) As such, units near to such monstrosities fight with increased vigor and disregard for their safety as they vie for the attention of their chosen god.

Shadow in the Warp: This one I don't quite have such a thought out explanation for. Save that being so near these devoted chaos beings is unnerving to those attempting to channel the warp for any purposes, and with the mildly amused attention of warp denizens watching the carnage the ravening hordes are wreaking the chances of them lashing out at offending psykers is greatly increased while in a conflict with this force.


On to specific units

HQ's:
Hive Tyrant: A lesser MC with a variety of options and builds, to me seems to fit the bill for a nice big 'ol Daemon Prince leading the pack.
Tyranid Prime: 3+ Armor Save, Boneswords as a cursed Acrozius, 3 wounds, S and T 5, for me sounded like a good place for a true-scale CSM Apostelary to be sewing the seeds of heresy along side his horde of mutants and traitors.

Elites:
To be honest, I haven't put any thought into this section. I'm sure there's plenty of potential to make a variety of nasty mutated fiends and wretches to throw about this category, there's just nothing here that fit my idea of a LaTD army.

Troops:
Hormagaunts: Crazed, gibbering mutants in large numbers sound pretty appealing to me for LaTD army. And Hormagaunts feel like a good way to represent them to me. Nearly unarmored, but nimble and ferocious, I pictured mutants working in a similar fashion to 28 Days Later zombies for this role.

Termagants: Traitor Guard were a big part of my old planned LaTD force, and Termagants are a good way to fill that hole. I was thinking Devourers as an assortment of looted, mutated, modified, and otherwise warrenty-voided weaponry to back up the lines of the gibbering horde. Although the basic Fleshborer may be more reasonable, I admit.

Warriors: Big Mutants, no other way to go there. CC equipped Warriors felt ideal as Big Mutants to me. A large unit or two of these to smash faces and inspire the lesser mutants and traitors would be very welcome in the force.

Fast:
Again, like Elites, potential, but nothing I needed or looked into.

Heavy:
Tyrranofex: This one may be a bit of a stretch, but I wanted them as a centerpiece for the army and to reinforce the traitor guard backbone of the army. I thought Tyrannofex's would be ideal parallels for highly corrupted and possessed Leman Russes. Almost more Daemon than tank, a grotesque hulking abomination of flesh and steel blasting things to bits from a distance.



Now, whether this used as an army would be competitive or not would be another thing altogether, but I'm just looking for some opinions. If I tried to play you using this as a counts-as force (Not proxies, every Termagant equivilant would be a consistantly modelled Traitor Guard, every Tyrannofex a lumbering tank-beast) would you have any qualms? Or any suggestions to make it more plausable?

I'd even be more than happy to make sheets of pictures and explanations for all of the different types of units and what they are to hand out to opponents. I'd just like some opinions from outside of my direct gamer group before starting a project of this magnitude.

Hmm. You can probably easily get away with it around your friends. The main concern I'd have is that it might be confusing to an opponent that's not familiar with your army (especially if you plan to treat something that normally has an armor value as something with wounds). But I suppose if the Grey Knights can get away with having a monstrous creature, you should be able to field this without too many problems. Just make sure everything is on the right base and is the appropriate size.

There's not a chaos or demon army that would work for you? It would be simpler to go chaos-to-chaos than it would be chaos-to-tyranid.

I like your style, man. I really do. It sucks when armies get invalidated, but it's awesome when people can take a bum deal like that and make something awesome like this. Personally, the only counts-as I'm having issues with is the Tyrannofex. You'd need to really make it stand out as being more monster than tank, which may be hard. I'm talking no traeads touching the ground here. You could field daemon princes as Carnifexes with the right conversions I'm betting.

Also, bushido, there's no real parallels to masses of non-Marine mutants in either of the existing codices. I desperately wish there were, but no dice.

Yeah, that's why I was worried about the Tyrannofex's. I was planning on them being as much (or more) daemon than tank to help push the MC rather than Vehicle thing. Plus be a really fun sculpting project.



If I were to do it, everything would of course be appropriately scaled and based. Nothing too out of proportion with what they're representing. The only real sizing issue is just with the basic troops being bipedal, they're taller and not as long as guants. But they'd still be on appropriate bases and everything. The size of a Tyranid Warrior is ideal for my thought on Big Mutants, and I'd want to true scale (or larger) a Word Bearers Apostelary to fill in on the larger base for a Prime. And I was planning on doing the Tyrannofex Daemon-Engines on a Trygon base, as that seems to be pretty standard among the Tyrannofex's I've seen.

I've tried some of the others, particularly the daemons route, but encountered some even bigger hang ups that way. Such as Horrors being the only way to represent traitor guardsmen, and explaining why the whole army is deepstriking. The next best ruleset I could find was Eldar, but even it held more problems than the Tyranid way.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Brother SRM wrote:I like your style, man. I really do. It sucks when armies get invalidated, but it's awesome when people can take a bum deal like that and make something awesome like this. Personally, the only counts-as I'm having issues with is the Tyrannofex. You'd need to really make it stand out as being more monster than tank, which may be hard. I'm talking no traeads touching the ground here

Oh yeah, I was picturing these things to be almost like obliterators on some serious steriods. Pretty much a husk of a tank with daemonic parts erupting from ruptured sides and hatches. Encompassing turrets and blurring lines between flesh and steel. Essentially what's left of the Leman Russ would just be providing the 2+ save for the mass of tentacles, eyes, and various other fleshy-bits bursting out of them.

It seems like you've put a good deal of thought into this, so I say go for it.

I think a defiler or something similar would make a better Tyrannofex stand-in than a Leman Russ, but that's just my hang-up. Shouldn't let that stop you.

I'm not too keen on a Leman Russ (or any other vehicle) counting as a MC, unless it's so daemonically possessed that there are tentacles and limbs etc poking out all the hatches, to make it more obviously organic and merely carrying the vehicle on its back as armour, so to speak.

Don't want to throw a spanner in the works, but have you considered the new GK codex instead? The GK Henchmen units seem ideal for Lost and the Damned models. Big armoured mutants counting as Termies etc...

I may have missed if someone else said this already, but Grey knights could do a decent job or representing LotD ... what with the mixed human/marine comp, some vehicles, a MC, etc. Bunch of special rules and model types to exploit to show off different types of units.

Edit .. last poster just suggested the same thing. LOL.

For the MC Leman maybe you could go for a Transformer-gone-HORRIBLY-HORRIBLY-wrong look. Instead of a tank that turns into a robot it's a tank that unfolds into a sculpted monstrosity.