Sometimes the theme for a custom Warhammer 40k army is complex, and sometimes it’s as simple as giving all your robots a 3D-printed cowboy hat. Elizabeth, aka Poizin_zer0 on Reddit, has rethemed her whole Adeptus Mechanicus army to look more like cowpokes on the lonesome range.
If you’re familiar with the Adeptus Mechanicus Warhammer 40k faction, you might expect that Elizabeth’s inspiration came from the cowboy-like Serberys Raiders minis. But Elizabeth says she just thinks cowboy robots are “kinda cute”.
She adds that growing up in rural Alberta, Canada, gave her an “ingrained” love of the Western aesthetic. “I love Kastelans”, she adds, “so I had to find a way”.
Elizabeth has played Warhammer 40k on and off for 15 years, and the Adeptus Mechanicus were her first new army after a fairly long hiatus. The ninth edition rules turned her off the faction, but she’s “been stripping and repainting my old Mech since the start of 10th edition as I really loved the new approach” to the faction rules.
Last August she doubled her painting pile with a plan to redo “an entire army”. She stripped off the Khorne red that her robots and Skitarii were previously painted in, and is painting them all over again – this time, with 3D printed cowboy hats.
When picking a new scheme for painting miniatures, she went with “a vibrant base colour with simple additions I could opt to enhance” to ensure she could get it done as quickly as possible. She picked “the brightest oranges” in her paint collection, and is using chipping medium and streaking grime to heavily weather the minis. You can find lots more pictures of Elizabeth’s army on Reddit.
Each of the Kastelan Robots in the force has a unique emoji face and name. “When I can get myself or my opponent emotionally attached to my minis I am having an all around great time”, Elizabeth says. She’s even made wanted posters to proclaim their dastardly deeds.
The most challenging part of the project was posing the Cerastus Knight. Elizabeth says she “opted to go wild on his posing using an old broken baneblade” for the Knight to leap over. “Cerastus Knights in my mind are agile and dangerous so I wanted to have that all represented in a model”, Elizabeth says, adding “it turns out [that’s] really hard to do as posing that many limbs is not easy”.
It’s a very coherent army, and shows that one or two custom parts (and the help of a 3D printer) can deliver on a premise very effectively. For another example of a similarly simple but effective conversion, check out this Hello Kitty Space Marine army!
Source: Wargamer
