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So I was discussing with a fellow necron player, and the topic of scarabs and the lack of "ready availability" came up. - only way to get them is purchase warrior boxes, battle force, or FW.

He mentioned he trimmed the actual scarab models to 3 per base, to extend his swarms from what he got, and I suggested, why not just 1 per base? his response was a hard "no" and he called it cheesy, and borderline offensive since its not using the full model.

My point was, its not changing the height, base size, or anything else on the model - no advantage or disadvantage either way. its not like im cutting a space marine in half to double my marines, and the bases would be decorated with rocks, flock, grass, snow etc - be fully painted and so on. and since a "swarm" is an ambigious term... why not just go a single scarab to each base?

Unless im missing something... but would this be a acceptable thing to play against, or does it fly in the face of the intent of the game?

One scarab on a base would look terrible. Talk about an army of one.

also check out PuppetsWar, they have some fill ins that look pretty decent and come in packs of 10 I believe.

I would not consider it cheesy. But minimizing the amount you have to spend.

Also, hoard o bits sells them on their website and probably their ebay account as well.

As long as you were liberal with the LoS not many people would mind.

I would have no issue with it, and as long as they look good to you, go for it.

DeathReaper wrote:As long as you were liberal with the LoS not many people would mind.

I could see people very easily getting grumpy about this. Scarabs are small to start with, and only having one stem further reduces this. And, then there's every possibility (depending on your playing group) that - if you are liberal with LoS - someone could try and exploit that in reverse, and then claim modelling for advantage if you didn't agree.

DexKivuli wrote:

DeathReaper wrote:As long as you were liberal with the LoS not many people would mind.

I could see people very easily getting grumpy about this. Scarabs are small to start with, and only having one stem further reduces this. And, then there's every possibility (depending on your playing group) that - if you are liberal with LoS - someone could try and exploit that in reverse, and then claim modelling for advantage if you didn't agree.

If your opponents are that uptight about it, then do not play them.

Its not cheesy, just kinda not pretty as its meant to be a swarm. a suggestion would be to add debris and items to the base in addition to the scarab. maybe greenstuff mold some scarab shapes and add them in to make it seem like a swarm.

I've actually started making mine stretch by working on only using one and a half to two scarabs per base, using scenic terrain and left over bits from my other armies to fill in gaps and make it look like the scarabs are eating things. Haven't had a complaint about them yet!

Yea, one and a half sounds like it could make for some interesting conversion work.

Put one whole scarab, and one half of a scarab per base. The half scarab would be "Burrowing" or "Surfacing" from the base and use some sand or grass and dirt to give them the "just came out of the ground/just starting to burrow into the ground" look.

DeathReaper wrote:Yea, one and a half sounds like it could make for some interesting conversion work.

Put one whole scarab, and one half of a scarab per base. The half scarab would be "Burrowing" or "Surfacing" from the base and use some sand or grass and dirt to give them the "just came out of the ground/just starting to burrow into the ground" look.

Pretty much it, right there. I have a few that I want to take left over tank hulls / infantry and make it look like they are consuming the models on the base. Just haven't figured out a good way to do that yet (Though I have spare arms and legs all over the place on the bases.)

i might go to 2 a base, but im definitly going to go full decorative bases. anything else would just be....well coping out. (especially since everything else in my army has fairley in depth basing.)

the questin i have though, the bases are already low, and really, the scarabs dont extend much higher then half an inch... so whats the diffierence between 1 and 2? or 2 and 3? where is the line "drawn" at too few?

DarthSpader wrote:i might go to 2 a base, but im definitly going to go full decorative bases. anything else would just be....well coping out. (especially since everything else in my army has fairley in depth basing.)

the questin i have though, the bases are already low, and really, the scarabs dont extend much higher then half an inch... so whats the diffierence between 1 and 2? or 2 and 3? where is the line "drawn" at too few?

All you have to do is always give your opponent the benefit of the doubt and say they can draw LOS to your Scarabs if they can see any portion of your base and they can have no complaints over you having only a single Scarab per base.

I agree it would look terrible, but if you play that way there's no reason you should have any rules-related trouble with your opponents over the matter.

Personally I think 3 per base is the way to go because it nicely represent the 3 wounds the swarm has. In fact, some crazy people even magnetize their Scarabs onto the base so they can remove each one when the base suffers any wounds.

I have gone down to 2 per base. Anything less than that wont too cheesy, but wouldn't look very good IMHO.

Didn't knwo about the puppetwar scarabs but they look pretty cool!!


http://www.puppetswar.com/product.php?id_product=69

I only put 3 scarabs per base myself, but I couldn't do 2 or 1 per base. I would laugh at them everytime I saw them. I just couldn't take them seriously. Necrons just got all the models they need to make our armies look complete on the table top. I don't want to ruin that by having 1 scarab per base.

Amanax wrote:

DeathReaper wrote:Yea, one and a half sounds like it could make for some interesting conversion work.

Put one whole scarab, and one half of a scarab per base. The half scarab would be "Burrowing" or "Surfacing" from the base and use some sand or grass and dirt to give them the "just came out of the ground/just starting to burrow into the ground" look.

Pretty much it, right there. I have a few that I want to take left over tank hulls / infantry and make it look like they are consuming the models on the base. Just haven't figured out a good way to do that yet (Though I have spare arms and legs all over the place on the bases.)

Not related to the thread, but if you put a lone arm sticking up you could model tiny little scarabs (like, basically a wee blob of GS with an eye) where the arm joins to your base and flowing up the limb, with the larger scarabs moving onwards/one or two pausing/climbing the arm themselves, it'd look good. Not all scarabs are the same size, and I reckon an arm reaching up, fingers outstretched, half skeleton half shredded skin would look sweet.

I'm surprised (but not really) that GW didn't release a separate Scarab kit with 5 or 10 bases in. They would have sold LOADS.

Praxiss wrote:I'm surprised (but not really) that GW didn't release a separate Scarab kit with 5 or 10 bases in. They would have sold LOADS.

Games Workshop has never seemed to release models based on the power of the rules. I mean, don't get me wrong, sometimes it seems like they do, but then there are tons and tons of examples where they completely neglect to release models for things that players are dying to buy in droves (like SW Thunderwolves, Tyranid Trygons, etc) that let you know this isn't truly the case.

Agreed, what i meant was that, after they proved to be so amazingly popular and almost a required item in necron armies, I'm surprised they didn't realse a kit of scarabs. They abviously have the moulds for sprues as they are in the warriors box.

As it is, a lot of peopel are buyign from Puppetwar, Ebay etc and GW are losing out on cash because peopel dont want to buy the lowly warrior kit just to get 4 scarab bases.

Games Workshop has never seemed to release models based on the power of the rules. I mean, don't get me wrong, sometimes it seems like they do, but then there are tons and tons of examples where they completely neglect to release models for things that players are dying to buy in droves (like SW Thunderwolves, Tyranid Trygons, etc) that let you know this isn't truly the case.

You mean like the old metal bloodcrushers pushing £18 per model when people were looking at 16+ of them? lol.


OT: I keep to 3 per base, i find any more and i have no room for decoration and it looks cluttered, any less and its just boring and plain.

Just like ripper swarms forgeworld do a good supply of scarabs. It looks cheaper then what you'd pay for stuff on ebay but ymmv.

liturgies of blood wrote:Just like ripper swarms forgeworld do a good supply of scarabs. It looks cheaper then what you'd pay for stuff on ebay but ymmv.

The FW ones are hideous! and WAY overpriced.




all this for the low low price of £16!!!! plus postage.



or the Puppetwar ones (whcih look almost identical to the normal GW ones)...10 scarabs for £4.35 plus postage.

No brainer?

On a similar note, most of my ripper swarms are 4-5 per base, however, I do have a few one-only bases (mostly for parasite of mortrex use).

I have 20 bases of Scarabs with just one on them....of course they are Scarabs from 3rd Edition.

With the new Scarabs I do mount them 3 per base. One thing I want to do is make would counters for my multi-wound models in my Necron army using the extra Scarabs I have. I plan on using 25mm bases with the number of Scarabs on it indicating the number of wounds left on the model (2 Scarabs for 2 wounds left and 1 for 1 wound left).

DarthSpader wrote:So I was discussing with a fellow necron player, and the topic of scarabs and the lack of "ready availability" came up. - only way to get them is purchase warrior boxes, battle force, or FW.

He mentioned he trimmed the actual scarab models to 3 per base, to extend his swarms from what he got, and I suggested, why not just 1 per base? his response was a hard "no" and he called it cheesy, and borderline offensive since its not using the full model.

My point was, its not changing the height, base size, or anything else on the model - no advantage or disadvantage either way. its not like im cutting a space marine in half to double my marines, and the bases would be decorated with rocks, flock, grass, snow etc - be fully painted and so on. and since a "swarm" is an ambigious term... why not just go a single scarab to each base?

Unless im missing something... but would this be a acceptable thing to play against, or does it fly in the face of the intent of the game?

god i love that hulk scene... that is all

Consider other applications of the scarab question. A GW pic of the scarab swarm has 4 scarabs on it. A space marine has legs, chest, head, backpack, arms and gun. If you have 1 scarab on a base, that is similiar to a space marine with 1 arm and the gun. This would normally be a no-no, and a no brainer--a space marine with 1 arm and a gun is not a valid representation of a space marine.

BUT, what about a robot looking model which uses 1 space marine arm and the gun. Now we have gone from an invalid representation of the model to a conversion. This is the key difference.

After all, if your opponents dont care what you use as long as it is not confusing, then a blank base with the word 'Scarab' written on it will suffice.

But, if you want opponents who care about the models they are playing against, aka anyone who is in this more for the hobby instead of the game, then 1 scarab on a base is insufficient--it looks like you didnt care about the hobby side and just wanted the bare minimum to play the game. People into the hobby object to this, and for very valid reasons.

However, 1 scarab on a base that has numerous scenic elements, where the base is chomping through metal or halfway disintergrating a space marine, is now in 'conversion' territory. It is clear that, while only using 1 scarab base, effort was put into the hobby and into the appearance of the model you bring to the table for your opponent.

So like the spacemarine with 1 arm and gun, it is more about what you do with the GW bits and less about what specific gw bits are used.

DevianID wrote:Consider other applications of the scarab question. A GW pic of the scarab swarm has 4 scarabs on it. A space marine has legs, chest, head, backpack, arms and gun. If you have 1 scarab on a base, that is similiar to a space marine with 1 arm and the gun. This would normally be a no-no, and a no brainer--a space marine with 1 arm and a gun is not a valid representation of a space marine.

That is not a good comparison at all...

A space marine is not complete without arms legs, torso, head, and weapons.

A single scarab is complete, even if he did not bring any friends...

DevianID wrote:But, if you want opponents who care about the models they are playing against, aka anyone who is in this more for the hobby instead of the game, then 1 scarab on a base is insufficient--it looks like you didnt care about the hobby side and just wanted the bare minimum to play the game. People into the hobby object to this, and for very valid reasons.

However, 1 scarab on a base that has numerous scenic elements, where the base is chomping through metal or halfway disintergrating a space marine, is now in 'conversion' territory. It is clear that, while only using 1 scarab base, effort was put into the hobby and into the appearance of the model you bring to the table for your opponent.

So like the spacemarine with 1 arm and gun, it is more about what you do with the GW bits and less about what specific gw bits are used.

Again the Space marine example is not a good comparison at all...

The validity of the reasons and the "1 scarab on a base is insufficient" are just your opinion.

Most people would still play a game against unpainted/unfinished mini's. This is because everyone knows how long it takes to assemble and paint a bunch of mini's.

yakface wrote:
Personally I think 3 per base is the way to go because it nicely represent the 3 wounds the swarm has. In fact, some crazy people even magnetize their Scarabs onto the base so they can remove each one when the base suffers any wounds.

yeah, that's exactly what I've done with my bases.

What you could do, is GS your own scarab (I don't condone using a GW scarab, it's copywrite infringment) and then use a silicone mould stick you can get from ebay for a few £ to make a mould of your 'master' then make as many GS copys as as you want.