TOEG: Lost and the Damned – Gathering the Forces

With me personal vote as the tie-breaker, it’s Lost and the Damned for my venture in the TacComs Tales of Epic Gamers challenge. The first step will be to sort out some kind of army list. Like all my Epic armies, I will try to cover the entire book. Actual point values will therefore be a secondary concern for now.

After a quick read of the official LatD and the NetEA LatD beta list, I realized that I have a bit of a problem with my current LatD models. The old Epic Chaos range had a huge variety of interesting metal models and I have pretty much all of them. In the LatD list this translates into a whole bunch of Coven Support choices (4 for Khorne to cover the Lord of Battle and the six different kinds of Khorne Daemon Engines in at least an “assault”, “mid-range” and “shooty” configuration; 2 for Nurgle for the Plague Tower and Contagion Engines; 3 for Slaneesh for the two types of Scout Titans and the Knights; and 3 for Tzeentch with the Firelord, Doomwings and Silver Towers). That’s before adding more generic support units such as tanks, aircraft of artillery (all of which seem essential for actual gameplay). The problem is that the LatD list requires a 1:1 ratio of Covens to support units. Thus, I would need a dozen god-specific Covens plus probably another handful of Undivided Covens to fill the support roles.

I currently have 20 bases each of Mutants and Cultists plus a handful of character bases. I also have a dozen Big Mutants with the ability to make more if needed. The Mutant bases use Chaos and IG Beastman models from all editions of Epic plus a few of the newer daemons sprinkled in for variety (to be painted generically as mutants, not as actual daemons). The Cultists are about 50% actual Chaos Cultist models augmented by suitable left-over models (e.g. guardsmen, Eldar guardians, Orks, etc.). Depending on configuration that’s enough for 4 or 5 Covens or one per God – a basic but very unsatisfactory configuration.

Option 1: I could build more Mutants and Cultists along these lines to bulk out the force. This is pretty hopeless. The two primary models are rare commodities and usually not available independently. Buying them new would generate a huge waste of other Chaos models with no purpose. This option is pretty much dead.

Option 2: I could use the existing bases as Undivided and build up a new type of base for each God. The challenge with this approach is the choice of models. There are no God specific GW models and no proxies jump to mind. I would need proxies for all four Gods for this to make sense. Any ideas?

Option 3: I could paint the Mutants and Cultists in a bland non-god-specific pattern and build a bunch of god-specific character models to instantly “re-dedicate” units between games. Would 5 such “adjustable” Covens would be enough for most 3k games? Is it realistic to assume that the character base will always survive until the end (to keep identifying the unit)?

Option 4: Use the Option 3 generic approach for the God-specific Covens and then build a separate set of Covens using proxies. My current favourite proxy model would be DRM Ketzalis: http://www.darkrealmminiatures.co.uk/store/product.php?productid=154&cat=8&page=1 . They have that cloaked cultist look.

How is everybody else handling this issue in the LatD list?