You may remember from previous posts that some of my work buddies and I have been tinkering around with beginning a wargamers’ group to play various tabletop wargames, namely Warhammer 40,000 (WH40K). Since “regular” WH40K is pretty expensive and often time-consuming due to the numerous quantity of models involved, we were going to play Heralds of Ruin (HoR) Skirmish Battles. It used to be called HoR Kill Team, but since Games Workshop (GW) now has their own official game by that name, HoR cannot use it anymore per GW’s request. HoR uses small numbers of models, usually ten or less, to play fun, comparatively quick games set in the WH40K universe.
Here’s where the monsters come in: I was playing around with some ideas yesterday about how to introduce monsters, creatures, beasts . . . whatever you want to refer to them as into our games. You see, back in the day, I used to hunt fairly often. That was back when it wasn’t so prohibitively expensive to do so like it is now. I would almost always stumble across some sort of animal that wasn’t on my list of critters to hunt. When that would happen, I would stop for a little while and watch them, study them. It seemed to make the hunt that much more intriguing. Anyway, what I’m getting at is that while out HoR skirmish teams are out and about on their missions maybe they might stumble upon some sort of dangerous fauna. So, I began playing on my phone and came up with some rudimentary rules and stats for said wildlife.
I started out by coming up with custom rules for about four different “species”, but that proved to be tedious at best. So, I opted to take existing rules for already established entries such as Tyranids and Ogrins and tweak them a bit to fit the critters I had in mind.
I have a box of Tamiya Velociraptors (although they look more like Utahraptors). The Death Raptors as I would like to call them could use the Tyranid Hormagaunt stats.
A Minotaur miniature and the numerous mounted knights I own could use the rules from the Astra Militarum list for Ogryn and Rough Riders, respectively. The knights would be called Warp Knights, a species of Warp-spawned beasts that were first encountered aboard a Space Hulk. The Minotaur could be, drum roll please, a Minotaur!
I also have a box of Warp Hounds from GW’s old Warhammer Fantasy Battles line that I would call Dire Hounds. They would use the stats from Fenrisian Wolves from the Space Wolves’ Codex.
I think all in all these ideas will likely be well received. Now I just need to make time to assemble and paint said miniatures.
Part-Time Warlord 