It's not an original idea, but I've been thinking for a while of creating some Hordes of the Things armies from various accumulated 40K miniatures. A few judicious additions to the heaped-up plastic will need to be made, but I'm hoping to get four largish armies painted up in the next few weeks. The goal is a big game of HotT with some old friends later in the year.
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| Not quite finished, but getting there ... |
The assumed figure scale of HotT is unstated but large. So most of these elements will do their fighting in close combat only; the two orks on a base represent several hundred or more, and the short ranges of 40K weapons mean that most shooting will be factored into the base-to-base clashes. 'Shooter' elements, like the terminator with the assault cannon above, are exceptions.
A great deal of the fun of HotT comes from fitting particular miniatures into the game's 20 element types. The orks will be 'warbands' for the most part, and ordinary space marines will be 'blades'. The big terminator base above will serve as a 'phalanx' using these variant rules. Imperial guard, colonial militias and any other normal human types will be 'hordes'.
Then there are bikes ('riders' or 'knights'?), tanks ('knights' or 'behemoths') and dreadnoughts ('behemoths'). Jetpacked troops can serve as 'flyers' or 'aerial heroes'. And demons of various sorts can be pressed into service as 'dragons' and 'gods' in HotT terms.
There's something pleasing about multi-based miniatures - and these HotT elements will also work well for 'large skirmish' games such as The Men Who Would Be Kings and Rampant. As my 'shooters' are all individually based figures, they'll serve to make up the odd numbers in those games as casualties mount. And it's a lot easier to move six multiple bases than 12 individual miniatures.
You drilled out the barrels on the bolters, excellent. How many figures are you going to acquire/ paint?
ReplyDeleteI did - taking your advice!
ReplyDeleteThe initial plan is for four 36AP armies - two orkish and two human.
The first orkish army is looking like this:
6 warbands (12 figures) @12 AP
2 shooters (ork machine gunners) @4AP
2 riders (or knights - biker orks in any case) @4AP
2 behemoths (dreadnoughts) @8AP
1 magician (weirdboy) @4AP
1 ork hero @4AP
So, just 20 figures in all - not too demanding.
I'm building the first ork and human armies concurrently. I'll probably eventually split the humans into marines and local planetary defence forces (relatively primitive), but for now, the first army should be along these lines:
6 hordes (local militia) @6AP
2 riders/knights (local militia cavalry) @4AP
2 warbands (abhuman beastmen) @4AP
2 shooters (terminators with assault cannons) @4AP
2 phalanxes (terminators) @6AP
4 blades (marines) @8AP
1 hero (marine commander or local hero) @4AP
41 figures - mainly because of the hordes and because beastmen warbands may go three to a base.
Are you building from the lead mountain or is GW drawing you back in???
ReplyDeleteThey're mainly coming from the plastic pile, but I have made a judicious couple of eBay purchases.
ReplyDeleteFor the local human militia, I'm going to use Napoleonics (given their designation as hordes, it doesn't much matter whether they have lasguns or muskets); I might convert them a bit, but I'll probably just rely on paintwork to scifi them up a bit: with weird horse and fur colours, for example, and the occasional sabre painted as a power sword. I might also convert some medievals to represent militia from less advanced parts of the planet/star system.