They're more like guidelines anyway...

The final army I have to showcase from my outlandish collection started life as an idea for, once again, Winds of War in Bracknell. A simple throwaway comment at my local GW that "someone should do a Dark Eldar army with pirate hats" was what triggered me this time... the person who uttered those fateful words was aware of Aliens, BSG, Star Wars, Halo... so it's quite probable he did this within my earshot on purpose.

 

So knowing my usual buddy and I were due to attend Winds of War once more, I wrote up a quick list playing on an old internet stereotype - Ninjas vs Pirates. I would have the Pirates, and he would have the Ninjas - we would choose the sides we had both traditionally supported. We also considered going in full costume. Then Winds of War changed the tournament pack from the past few years running, making our armies of wyches in raiders illegal, in an effort to combat some alleged spam. So in the end we took a list that had a flyer and 7 venoms, to prove their theory wrong, and we came fourth - although among a dwindling field of competitors, this was not surprisingly the last Winds of War that ran. And so, my squad of Pirates and their ship just sat, part completed, for months... until Ken suggested another tournament, and I pushed the list to eleven...

Naturally my list had a Jack Sparrow in it, and for those of you who are familiar with these films, keep a weather eye on the horizon, for there are plenty more references in this list. Anyway, here Jack is riding some sea turtles that he has roped, and counts as a Beastmaster on skyboard. He was accompanied by a couple of flocks of razorwings, which are pictured at the top of the entry.

 

I also had a Black Pearl, and the crew to go with her. So, wyches with shardnets and impalers (they look so nautical!) riding a raider with Dark Lance (fired by a cannon, kinda like a harpoon)

 

 

 

To bolster my wych forces, I had a second squad... modelled as the crew of the Dutchman, complete with Davy Jones himself, although as he isn't allowed on land but once a decade, he has to improvise for his movement...

 

 

And yes, completely messing around with any prospective timelines here, the final piece of the pirate puzzle is an English contingent, lead by Barbosa... he represented the Piratical Dark Eldar character with a penchant for poisons. An English Warship (Ravager) almost brings the pirate force to it's full compliment...

 

 

But wait, where would pirates be without rum? So to replace the "Power From Pain" rule, I had Power From Rum. I had a list that included the exact same rules, but with a rum based background story as to why they take effect. And to make sure everyone got plenty of rum? I made a Pain Rum Engine.

 

 

The scene just looks like something from Tortuga, the firebelly represents the breath weapon, and before anyone says about modelling for effect, the table is the correct base size, that is what I measured the area of effect weapon from... however, for being shot at or assaulted, the entire square base counted. Yes, those bottles are my "pain" tokens...

 

 

This was a real centrepiece to the army, it attracted a lot of attention and I really am quite proud of it.

 

 

So, how about the ninjas? Well I decided Mandrakes made good ninjas, both in model and in rule, so a couple full size squads of them went in. Painting these models mostly black yet with a tiny little bit of interest was tricky, but I was pleased with the minimalist approach in the end and feel it worked well.

 

 

Naturally I included the mandrake character krhhehaazzekkradakh or whatever the hell his name was...

 

 

And to round out the force, some Batman inspired scourges.

 

 

I took this list to a tournament, and I got a very bad feeling when someone was looking over the armies of us early arrivals and said "Wow, someone brought Mandrakes, they should get bonus points for bravery!" Hmm... how bad can they be? I recall thinking. Well, my first game proved it to me. They needed a rum token to be any real use, so I sent them for an easy target, a space marine scout squad they outnumbered 2-1. After several rounds of combat, causing just one casualty, they broke and fled... by which point the entire rest of my army had been destroyed and my opponent had arrayed himself in a firing line to kill me after I'd killed his scouts... my mandrakes running from his victorious scouts was an unexpected bonus for him.

 

 

I got trounced the first two tournament games, and was heading for the wooden spoon, when fate dealt me a rookie Blood Angel player. His army mostly kicked the crap outta mine, and by the end I was just running my raiders around to make sure he couldn't kill them in assault. Luckily I had built up an impressive points lead by that point by playing the mission, so by managing to avoid dying, I won, avoiding the wooden spoon! I'll take what small victories I can sometimes...

 

Anyway, shortly after this the new codex dropped, and promptly removed the every character in this army and changed how everything worked, so probably a good thing it was a one off project...

 

That is the final crazy army I have to show, although I do have one more post in this series of posts... I will write a quick rundown of my future plans, which at the moment is a couple of basic play armies, plus a couple of cool weird project armies, plus an army that is... somewhere in between? The following are a few clues about the crazier plans I have...

 

Hope that tantalises somewhat till next week...