Tuesday - August 21, 2007

Undying Battle Shells

So, I'll start with one of the first things I purchased when starting to collect this army... my warriors.

A bit about the Necrons, first - Necrons have a few major things going for them. As they're essentially robots (dead souls trapped inside robotic bodies, bound to do the bidding of an unspeakably evil star god... but robots none the less) they have a VERY high leadership score to keep them from breaking and pinning and retreating and the like. They're NEARLY fearless. Also, being made of living metal helps when you get shot to pieces by a machine gun - no problem! We just self repair, get back up, and keep walking towards our enemy's inevitable defeat. Solid metallic bodies also offer a 3+ armor save across the board, making all of my guys just as tough as heavily armored Space Marines to take down with small arms fire.

The bad part, though, is that the Necrons don't like to lose, and are masters of teleportation. This means that if they ever take 75% losses to their core force, they cut and run, teleporting the living and dead out at the same time, leaving no trace except for their dead enemies that they were ever there in the first place. While this sounds cool as hell (and it is) it also means your enemy has to kill 75% of your guys to win automatically, regardless of the scenario's goal.

That said, let's talk about warriors.

The core of any Necron army are their warriors. They're the massive filler units that do nothing greatly special by themselves, but act as good, all around soldiers. 3+ armor saves, "We'll Be Back" rolls when they die, and gauss weapons to tear tanks in half with... what's not to love? A large number of warriors are important to any army to keep the number of models needed to beat me by Phase Out high.

The major design flaw, I find, with the Necrons, is inherent in their very nature - they're robots. Mass produced metallic monstrosities. They are soulless, mindless, killing machines mass produced for one purpose. Unfortunately, a character that is A) Mass produced, B) Mechanical, and C) Single minded only on killing his enemy does not offer much room for embellishment. The Space Marines and Imperial Guard fly their unit colors proudly. The Eldar hail from their Craftworlds, and adorn their warmachines and power armor in the colors of their home heraldry. Even the Tyranids have mottles and spots in colors according to their breed and hive that give them points of visual interest.<

The Necrons are metal.... and ... um.... metal.

So how do I, as a creative individual, personalize a squad of Warriors? More to the point, how do I differentiate one squad from the next, so I can sew variety into what would otherwise be a very boring army? Easy - I force unit colors onto them.

The Necron Lord can join any other unit of Necrons. So, I began considering that those graced with his presence would be like an honor guard to him. They would need to be distinguished ini some way, so other Necrons would see them coming and say, "Hey, get out of their way! These guys are the personal escort to the Necron Lord!"

Hence, squad one was painted in my main color scheme - Grey and Purple... but squad 2 - my honor guard - was done in fantastic Mr. Clean white with red markings. The idea being that these particular warriors were seen as "pure" and graced with nice white armor to be in the company of my Lord.

I got the idea for the white armor from two places. A buddy of mine, Josh, once said something about evil being scarier when it was "clean." Everyone can appreciate the ickiness of evil, but isn't it far more terrifying when that evil seems almost sterile? That's the look I was going for. Oh, and also Macross. :)

To tie the two units together, I created the Lord with the grey body and purple / yellow markings of the rest of my army, but with the shoulder plate markings and faceplate in red and white of the honor guard. To make him one step extra special, I gave him golden metallic paint instead of silvers on the joints and stomach tubes like all the other warriors.

A little freehanding of Necron runes onto the cape, and there we have it. Distinction in an army built around mass production and conformity.