THE SISTERS OF THE EMPEROR’S MERCY

A note on the new GW plastic kits.  Don’t like them.  If they are even a little bit out of skew, they will not go together properly.  Especially the cabling on these Retributors.  Had to do the ol’ bass guitar string trick on a couple of these because of that…

In my opinion, a plastic kit should allow pose-ability.  Otherwise, just give me one or two piece metal models all day!

Bajeezus!  I found this guy in my pile of shame.  In Finecast no less!!!  I don’t think he’s a part of the game anymore, but he was part of that Codex Witch Hunter craziness.  I think I need to paint him up…

The concept of this army was an all female force.  They don’t make female Arco Flagellants, so I had some kit-bashing to do.  Starting with a Witch Aelves box – they have whips and flails in their kit – I added Sisters of Silence heads, some various bits from the Talos box and some Admech stuff.  This was probably the biggest conversion project I was looking at for this army, so I’m glad to get that sorted early on!

I decided to make these girls a bit more cybered-out, so I added some cables using bass guitar string and a few more bitz.

I like to get the basing sorted at the beginning.  Originally, I was going for cobblestones that I did with textured plasticard.  It looked okay for back in the day, but I feel like I need to upgrade that.

So, this has become a bigger pain in the ass than I thought it would be…

I decided to go with Greenstuff textured rollers.  This seemed like a good idea, they make all kinds of different patterns that look awesome.  Unfortunately, anyone who has used these rollers will know how horrible they are.

They are so close to being great, but I guess there is an issue with the manufacturing process that leaves these groves in the recesses that can be clearly seen in bases that are made from these rollers.  The only remedy is to sand down the bases after you roll them, which basically smooths the details.

I will be looking for textured rollers from other manufacturers that don’t have this flaw…

So, I’ve moved on to sanding these bases.  It trashes some of the detail, but what else can I do…

My last attempt to make these Greenstuff rollers viable, I went in with a round Dremel burr and routed out all the cavities in the cobblestone roller.  This will not work with the angular stones I showed previously, unless I really wanted to take hours and hours to it…  Nope!

Here you can see the flaws in the roller I have been using.

As an update to this situation, I used super glue to fill in the recesses hoping to eliminate the lines.  It was somewhat successful…

Got a lot of the army up on bases.  Waiting for some premade bases I ordered from Shadow’s Edge Miniatures.  Taking a long time…

So, what am I dealing with:  This army is made up of 90% of the old 1^st edition models:

6 – Metal Battle Sister Squads (2 painted), 1 new plastic squad (just for variety).

2 – Metal Seraphim Squads

3 – Metal Retributor Squads, 1 new plastic (again for variety).

5 – Metal Canonesses (these are good for conversions), 1 new resin Canoness Veridyan.

6 – Metal Imagifiers/Standard Bearers.

3 – Metal Exorcists (because you need three).

1 – Metal Repentia Squad.

1 – Metal converted Celestian squad.

2 – Converted old school rhinos.  I converted 2^nd gen rhino.

2 – Converted 1st gen Immolators. 2 converted 2^nd gen Immolators

1 – New converted squad of Crusaders (painted).

1 – New converted squad of Arco Flachulents (based on Witch Aelves).

1 – Triumph of Saint Katherine (which I will be using the figures for dual duty as Missionaries, Priests, Dialogus and Hospitallers).

1 – Original Ephrael Stern (I converted her to a jump Canoness which is no longer viable – but I am thinking of using her as Saint Celestian).

3 – Penitent Engines, 1 metal, 2 new converted plastic.

1 – Junith Eruita (based on a Raging Heroes’ High Preacher Almeriah on War Pulpit ).

I have two squads that I painted nearly twenty five years ago in metal armor with brass accents, red tabards and white boltguns.  The painting is rather sharp, just needs some more highlighting on the tabards.  I think I will be using this scheme for the rest of the army.  I also painted some Crusaders more recently based on the Sisters of Silence with some helmeted heads from Forgeworld, and Dark Angel terminator storm shields.

A long-time backstage lurker, first time poster.

From the early days of Rogue Trader, I have been into 40K.  Sadly, I have not played a game in many years.  Lately I feel reinvigorated to explore 40K once more – not to play the game, but to hobby.

I have built and painted several large armies over the years: Space Marines, Imperial Guard, Tomb Kings.  However, I have numerous armies that I have collected that are in shameful states of unfinishedness… These include: Mechanicus, Grey Knights, and the oldest of all – Sisters of Battle (Adeptus Sororitas).

I loved the Sisters because of how Blanchian they were; epitomizing the grimdark of 40K that drew me in originally. When the Codex Witch Hunters came along, a lot of crazy stuff was added, but they became rather gimmicky – how about an all Deathcult Assassin army?

That being said.  The build of this army was originally based on the Codex Witch Hunters.  The thing I really loved about that codex was how batshit crazy it was.  They were like a cross between Mad Max and Judge Dread.  Some of my early conversion work reflects this.