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I'm itching for something a little different than my normal space wolf loadout, both as a different army to collect and as a conversion project. The theme is going to be some kind of space pirate style characters for fluff. From a conversion standpoint, I want to do something that can have a lot of customization into the miniatures (pirates should be anything but uniform) and I want something where I can steal from multiple codexes and lists to have a lot of random stuff in said army all more or less under one banner.

From a purely fluff standpoint, the obvious choice for pirates would be Dark Eldar or Eldar Corsairs. The former have always been a favorite of mine simply because the sculpts are amazing (and deep down I'm still a goth kid at heart), but the codex doesn't do it for me in this edition at all. Corsairs are a better army, but would require an insane amount of forgeworld purchases to properly collect.

If I want pirates, I probably need to go human. For maximum "steal from codexes" capabilities, I'm thinking I want to do something from beneath the broad umbrella of the Imperial faction. Plus, Imperial vehicles are much easier to fool with plasticard, and human models mean I'm going to have a lot more options for grabbing third party bits and minis.

After mulling it over, I've come up with two main directions and their relative fluff:

1. Run Imperial Guard as though they were all traitors, deserters, and renegades. Mix and match a whole mess of different minis together for the actual platoons, unified more or less by a restricted color palette to keep it cohesive. Make the Warlord an Ordo Xenos Inquisitor, but fluff him as a Rogue Trader turned Pirate Lord. The IG are the forces he's amassed beneath his banner. I can then add in things like Imperial Knights as looted walkers, mercenaries, traitors/exiles, etc. The various assassins could even be represented as various xenos allies he's made (the death cult assassin girls are begging to be counts-as with dark eldar wyches). Cult Mechanicus or Skitarii could be part of an explorator's retinue or hereteks.

2. Codex Space Marine, but fluff them as a renegade company of blackshields. Probably still collect IG or MT Scions as allies to represent a Tyrant-of-Badad combined arms approach. Most of the above could still work in terms of allying things in, but with C:SM there's probably less of a point to it. This is going to be slightly more similar to my current space wolves army, for better or worse, but I probably wind up with more characters to convert as C:SM than with the above approach. Ultramarines alone would give me a whole roster of counts-as to fool with, and similar fun could be had with some of the forgeworld chapters (Lias Issadon and the Raptors are a lot of fun to play on the tabletop). I'm not quite as sure what to do with the conversions for a blackshield fleet though. My first thought is to do a ton of black armor with the proper iconography filed off and new (more intentionally crudely applied) icons clearly spray-painted on or whatever.

I think a lot of it comes down to who i want my warlord to be - a rogue trader pirate with potential eldar wenches, or a counts-as Big Papa Smurf?

Looking for any input, suggestions, other ideas to play into the concept, or links to other people who might have tried something similar.

b-b-but what about Ork Freebooterz?

You get all the kustomisation you need and diversity, plus Freebooterz have all the gear they want and all the nutcases joining them that you could need. Also lets you run most of the characters from Codex Orks as they are mostly Freebooterz too. And on top of all that, you can lootify almost any vehicle you can think of in 40k.

Plus you can paint them in outlandish paint schemes - mine have pinstriped trousers. Why? Because they can, that's why!

Apparently Space Vikings just aren't pirate-ish enough...

Get a squad of Cultists and kitbash them together with Space Wolf legs and heads, ask around some Chaos players to throw the odd horned helmet your way and you have a rag-tag bunch of half clothed yahoos with a mixture of Imperial and Chaos weaponry, nab some Dark Eldar ships - why is it 'dark equivalents are usually more stylish? - and run them as Rhinos and Razorbacks.

I think you're dismissing Corsairs to easily. It's very easy to draw on the 3 plastic Eldar factions models to build up a force. I don't like the Guardian models so I'm using Kabalites as my Reaver squads, Reaver Jetbikes as Cloud Dancers, the Shadowseer as a Void Dreamer, I'm going to use the extra sails I have left from Raiders to convert Eldar Warwalkers in Wasp War Walkers (because I don't want to pay £180 for 6!).

I've yet to think of a good replacement for the Corsair Jet Packs for conversions, since the upgrade set is currently out of stock and I get the feeling replacing the mold is not currently a priority for them, but the Venom is in the army list and frankly I'd use the Starweaver as its a better looking model. The only place where buying Forgworld really becomes a necessity is Doom of Mymeara and if you want to run things like the Lynx, Warp Hunters, Hornets (might be possible to convert the Ravager for a Hornet) and flyers. All fun things but not the kind of models you'd run more than one or two of anyway.

Wolfpack raiders

You can use renegades, CSM or Inquisitors to represent them.





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Or you could go for Red Corsairs and take Huron Blackheart.
The model doesn't really look like your standard pirate, but his fluff and name compensates more then enough for it.
Just give him a Eyepatch and remove his halo for the ultimate villain look and add some pirate feel to the CSM's and you got yourself some decent pirates.


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He even has an exotic pirate pet.