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To give the retinue a little more punch in hand-to-hand, I added 3 Death Cult Assassins (again, when these were their own unit).  

Fortunately, both the Inquisition and Adeptus Sororitas books still allow you to take these guys, now as part of the retinue. 

I keep the general army colour scheme or gold, red and brown with a little green accent.  I may go back and add a little detailing on their skirts one day.

The models are the OOP Confrontation Clones of Dirz.  The original model came with a sword and axe, so did a weapon swap with the axe hand to add a second Power Sword.  I cut down a Catachan Power Sword by removing the back half of the blade to make it less bulky.  These models area little more 'true-scale' than the GW, but I think that works for a lean, agile assassin.

I was quite taken (as I suspect like many of us were) with Rackham's line of Confrontation miniatures.  If you've never heard of them, you can read the Wikipedia entry to learn about the company and the world, and this catalog site to see their line of figs.

And while I never played the game I certainly bought a good number of their figs - and a great deal more when the company eventually went under and stores started to dump inventory.  I still have a shoe box filled with unopened blisters.  Beyond the quality of the sculpts, the bizarre, fantastical (if slightly over the top) art style makes for some outstanding Inquisition figs.

You can still purchase some of the figs from Legacy Miniatures (ie. CMON) and a few other places (although not sure they are licensed or recasters so will avoid putting links)

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Maybe some of you are begining to suspect the Inquisition

Here are the next couple henchmen: 2 bodyguards for a little muscle/protection.

Merzick Cender - Bodyguard

Merzick was a PDF officer who worked his way up to Palace Guard for a royal magistar on Ionis IV. When the lord magistar and his court eventually fell to Slaanesh perversion and was brought low by Inquisitor Kanis, Merzick was the leader of the remaining loyalist guards and executed Magistar Verkix in the final assault on the palace.  Impressed with Merzick's leadership, fighting ability and loyalty to the God Emperor, Kanis recruited him as a bodyguard.

The mini is a stock Warmachine fig: Captain Maxwell Finn, a solo from Cygnar.

Konrad Tharsus - Warrior

Tharsus was born the son of a local noble in lower Thuringia on the Knight world of Thular XII.  Seeing a traveler waylaid by local brigands, Tharus leap to his defense, defeating the axemen and vowing safe travel for what turned out of be Kanis on a covert mission.  Now a bodyguard, he has traveled far beyond his primitive homeworld.  Trained by Merzick in the ways of the wider Imperium, he still prefers to fights with the more familiar, sword and shield.

The fig is an old reaper fighter miniature (long before any of the Bones).  He’s been ‘grim-darked’ by replacing his armored feet with Catachan combat boots, his sword swapped for a Power Sword and a Storm Shield and grenades added.

Inquisitor Sol and his Retinue

Finally, here is a shot of the entire retinue as it stands: Kanis, his bodyguards, chergyons, spymater, mystic and psyker.  I will certainly add more retinue members (and more Inquisitor bands), but for this is it for now. 

The next post will see a little more punch added to the army.  Stay tuned. 

For the Emperor!

Last post I showed you the Inquisitorial Chimeras - this time its their owners:  2 squads of Inquisitorial Stormtroopers.

These guys were painted prior to the new Scions minis (which are fantastic!) and even before the Cadian Kardashians...er... Kasrkins.  So, you know, old school.

Painted them in the traditional Inquisitorial colours but opted to make the masks and cloth a cream colour to give them a slightly different look than the more typical red and black.

They were also built back when the codex had Stormtroopers.  Much of this army is now in limbo, rules wise.  With the old Witch Hunter codex being replaced by the digital Adeptus Sororitas dex, many of the non-Sisters units have faded away (which, unfortunately, is largely what this army consists of).  Perhaps they will be reconstituted as Inquisitor henchmen, or as part of an IG army or perhaps maybe even a new Sisters dex (however unlikely).

The minis are mostly stock - its always a little harder to converted old single-piece metals, but did give the Sergeants new heads, banners and weapons.  

The banners were my first attempt as designing something in Photoshop, printing to a clear decal sheet and putting on a hand-made banner (this was also back before GW was making sculpted, plastic army banners).  Not 100% successful so always had it in mind to redo them at some point.

I also wanted everyone to have gas masks, so sculpted masks onto any of the open faced men.



Here come the minis!

While some of these posts will cover whatever I'm currently working on, they'll also server to show off some of my existing armies, in the form of a project log.

First up are Witch Hunters/Sisters of Battle.  I started this army at the time the first Inquisition codex came out and has been the slowest of slow burn projects.  I was originally going to do Deamonhunters but a friend of mine jumped on the Grey Knights (of which, many years later, he has a very nice 4000pt force).  I really had no interest in either Grey Knights or Sisters, I just wanted to do Inquisitors, so I switched.  It seemed like a fantastic opportunity to

  1. bring in some of the more esoteric concepts around 40K into the game - all those fluff elements that really sell the 40K background
  2. use (and therefore to buy) a wide range of minis from various manufactures as count-as 'agents of the Imperium'

To start the army I painted up an Inquisitor, a small warband (which I'll feature later), two units of Inquisitorial Stormtroopers (back when they were a thing) and a couple of Chimera's for their ride.  Here are a couple of WIP shots of those Chimeras:

I had three concepts when I started

  1. I wanted them to have more bling that a traditional Guard Chimera (this was the Inquisition after all).  I did a little green stuff casting of some Forgeworld bits using Super Sculpty - a stick and bake putty.  Not a super sophisticated technique but with a little practice can yield some decent results.  Over the years I've amassed quite a few of these molds
  2. I needed to get rid of the side lasguns (which always struck me as the most ridiculous part of an otherwise very nice kit).  I removed the guns, puttied over the lasgun hatches and replaced them with a few cast eagles
  3. I wanted a more substantial turret (the original seems a little weedy).  I subbed in a Space Marine Predator turret, modifying its autocannon option to be the Chimera's multi-laser.  This just makes it feel a little more 'tank like'

The turret is fully magnetized (you’ll find out how much I love magnets!), so you can remove the turret, the gun, the hatch, the power pack (and there's a hard point next to the hatch to add a hunter-killer, spotlight, radar, etc).

In terms of colour I went for the classic Inquisitor colour scheme of red and black.  Its a dramatic combination and ties in very well with my Flesh Tearers Space Marine army.

THE FINISHED PAIR

DETAIL OF TURRET and FRONT

'360 VIEWS' OF BOTH TANKS

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to leave a comment or contact me at mechanicusrexminiatures@gmail.com.