Kill Team: Renegade

Kill Team: Renegade, Mantis Warriors chapter. circa 910-930.M41

Over the past couple of years, I've slowly assembled a small handful of Rogue Trader-era marine sculpts that I really liked with the intention of making a little Mantis Warriors kill team. I'd picked up the chap with the shuriken catapult and the brother in customised armour already. I knew I wanted the flamer warrior with one arm bare, and from there it was a matter of deciding to get two more to round the squad to a game-legal five.

The advent of Kill Team also means that I can use this squad as a hardcore team of veterans, where their customised colour patterns and lack of orthodox armour makes more sense. I'm hoping to expand the team, using a combination of miniatures already existing in my Mantis Warriors 'Winds of the Desert' army and converting a couple more with meta-friendly storm shields so that I can use them in the local 'scene'.

Anyway, let's go through the team and look at the inspiration behind their unorthodox armour patterns...

Brother-Sergeant Kitt

+ + + Brother-Sergeant Kitt is wearing Tranquility-era camouflage, indicating that he served during the Tranquility campaign, but is certainly no longer a sniper. + + +

RT01 Space Marines, from WD99 (March 1988).
Courtesy of The Stuff of Legends

I specifically tracked down Brother Kitt as the leader of the squad because he's one of the few marines that was painted in Mantis Warrior colours back in the 1980s! Here he is in all his bright yellow glory. (Brother Gorshin is also present in my Mantis Warriors army, as part of my Tranquility sniper squad.)

Brother-Specialist Slater

Non-Codex markings

+ + + Brother-Specialist Slater serves as a Comms specialist. Note the non-Codex kill markings that have been applied to his greaves and bolter. + + +

RT01 Space Marines, from WD100 (April 1988).
Courtesy of The Stuff of Legends

As with Brother Kitt, Brother Slater was selected because he appears in Mantis Warriors colouring in his original advertisement. I've actually painted him in the more modern colours, so that he matches the rest of my Mantis Warriors. For a bit of fun, I gave him the traditional Rogue Trader-era 'Kil' markings, but wrote them in Chinese! (Based on the Seven Kill Stele of Zhang Xianshong [wiki]. Please note that I cannot actually read any Chinese scripts, let alone paint them.)

Brother-Specialist Holt

The flamer's blue-and-silver pattern possibly indicates Astral Claw manufacture.

+ + + Brother-Specialist Holt serves as a weapon specialist (flamer). The damage to his powered armour, including the loss of the entire right arm, is a silent demonstration of the resupply issues the Mantis Warriors faced towards the end of the Badab conflict. Holt has also blackened his armour, possibly to improve stealth capability, but also to distance himself from the renegade actions of his chapter. He has refused all questioning on the subject. + + +

RT01 Space Marines, from RT3 Flyer (April 1988).
Courtesy of The Stuff of Legends

I haven't found Holt's original paint job, but there is this cheerful flyer from 1988 at least gives his name and names to most of the rest of Kill Team: Renegade.

I first saw this sculpt in a Bolter and Chainsword thread and fell straight away in love with him. He has a really feral, angry look, thick forehead and scowly. Plus, battered marines (missing armour! crude cybernetics) always appeal to me. I tried giving him a metallic black, battered armour look, roughly matching some of the Blackshields that you see in the Horus Heresy, especially the Third Covenant and Dark Brotherhood. Unfortunately, it came out a bit more 'regular black' than I intended, but it still looks okay.

A pink mohawk, red and blue details on his cybergear, and old-school yellow on the flamer nozzle completed the look. I had a bit of fun giving his flamer tank an Astral Claw look, as they supplied a lot of materiel to the Mantis Warriors, but it's actually really hard to see on the model due to his pose.

Renegades. (I can't remember the original source!)

The last two brothers are based on this iconic piece of art from the Rogue Trader era. Before I show you my take on them, you should pop over to Stro'Knor Macekiller and see what he did a few years ago. I stumbled over his blog and it inspired me to do the same.

Brother 'Big One' Fielding 

Note: Leather satchel holding shuriken discs

Shuriken catapult detail

+ + + Brother Fielding (cross.ref.: 'The One Big One') wielding a captured shuriken catapult. The xenos weapon shows indications of field modification by Fielding or another Mantis Warrior, including the replacement of the Eldar gene-sensitive stock and trigger with one suited for powered armour. Fielding has also customised his armour with a non-Codex camouflage pattern and idiosyncratic helmet and pauldron markings, although he has retained the Codex-pattern stripe for veteran status. Ironically, regular Mantis Warriors units rarely use such markings.  + + +

You can see Brother Fielding's 1980s pamphlets above. Because he wasn't one of the 'original' Mantis Warriors sculpts I was trying to collect, he got to to be the iconic One Big One. I didn't paint his KILL making or ONE BIG ONE, partly because the model is already quite busy - but mostly because my skill simply isn't up to it. I could barely do the hazard stripes!

&fatal_error: designation+corrupted

Non-Codex pauldron detail

+ + + Brother [designation%unknown%error + + + termination_script_genesis] wears customised power armour of an unknown mark and designation. It bears some resemblance to Mark IV and Mark VII designs, but the helmet is an almost unique configuration, although there have been recorded sightings of other marines wearing such armour. (cross.ref.: + + + termination_script_terminus] + + +

Space Marines Armour Variants, from Citadel Catalogue 1991, p.7.
Courtesy of The Stuff of Legends

This is marked as 'Artificer Armour 4' in the 1991 catalogue, which sadly post-dates the era in which each sculpt was given his own name. I like the idea that the Inquisitorial records have some kind of viral error which means that we'll never know his name...

At any rate, Artificer Armour 4 isn't ever really seen again. I know that he's in a colour image somewhere in a blue-and-white Ultramarines scheme. Other than that, he doesn't appear in any catalogues until around 2004, when he pops up in one of the short-lived 'complete' collector's guides. As Games Workshop stopped their bits/casting-on-demand/allowing Australians to buy from the UK services not long after that, I imagine this is when he is cast into history. You'll pardon the pun.

At any rate, he's come up beautifully in the red armour (thank you, Contrast paints!), and the blue/white diamond pattern even came out okay, if you don't look too closely. I gave him a golden visor to really double down on the old-school nature of his armour, and I think it looks right snazzy.

This was a fun little demi-squad to do as a breather from some of my larger projects, but it still contributed to the Mantis Warriors as a whole. I'm hoping to do more small-and-then-finished projects this year, rather than everything needing to be a dragging-on-for-years army-level slog. It will also let me play a variety of games. We'll see.

Coming up next for the Mantis Warriors are some scouts. Coming up next for the blog should be an after action report for the game of Necromunda I played two weeks ago...