With the new Arachnika Ash-jumpers taking over the wastes leap by leap, not to mention updated rules for grav-cutters and stylish Van Saar upgrades arriving for pre-order tomorrow, there’s never been a better time for the House of Artifice to get stuck into the Great Equatorial Wastes. Warhammer Community copy editor Gadge has taken up the challenge with his own gang, the Night Stingers, and he’s here to tell you how.
Gadge: I’ve been an avid Necromunda player since it’s inception in the mid-‘90s, so when I was asked if I’d like to take part in the Warhammer Studio campaign, it was the perfect opportunity to start a new gang – and also return to the very first gang I ever fielded.
I opted to side with the House of Artifice and field a gang of tech-savvy Van Saar. I’ve always liked the high-tech look of the Van Saar, with their sleek lines and clean-looking weapons – they’re a real novelty in the grimy and ramshackle underhive.
As the campaign was played over several months, across both the underhive and the ash wastes, we started with a whopping 2400 credits to purchase our gang. To that end, I decided on a broad mix of vehicles and fighter types to equip for all eventualities.
Choosing My Fighters
House Van Saar really is in it for the shooting match, so a tough Prime leader and a reliable Augmek sniper were my first port of call. These two capable marksmen are backed up by a solid core of lasgun and suppression laser-wielding Teks – as we’d not be able to recruit new fighters for some time. While it’s not their strong point, close combat is always fun, so one of the Teks is equipped with a servo claw and energy shield to mix it up a bit in melee – or at least provide a speed bump against an enemy charge.
All gangs need new blood – quite literally, in the case of the rad-ravaged Van Saar – so a couple of Subteks and a brace of Neoteks rounded out the gang and added a degree of mobility for underhive encounters.
Their first vehicle, ‘Iron Erich’, is a custom Heavy Vehicle using the rules in the Book of the Outlands. It’s based on a Skorpius Dunerider with a powerful mining laser, extra armour, and a transport cage all putting strain on that grav-drive. The ‘Ash Wastes Interceptor’ is another custom vehicle that’s largely an Achilles Ridgerunner with a considerable amount of Taurox parts from my bits box, and a healthy chunk of modelling putty to bulk out the cab.
With all that grey plastic in front of me, it was time to get painting!
Colour Selection
My goal was something sombre, quick, and simple that would look good in both game settings. Taking inspiration from House Van Saar’s spider-like logo I looked at various real-world colourings of arachnids and found a vicious black-and-orange creature called the katipō – a Maori name that means ‘night stinger’. Not only had I found my colour scheme, I'd found my gang's name too!
I started with a White Scar undercoat before painting their protective bodygloves with Garaghak’s Sewer. This absolutely fantastic Contrast paint gave me a one-coat finish and I could get straight onto painting their hard armour plates with Black Legion. With just these two paints most of the work was done, and after a few subtle Eshin Grey highlights added to the armour it was time to detail the crew.
While the Van Saar are high tech, I wanted a bit of a retro feel – so, inspired by the shining brass on a Victorian pumping station I’d visited, I decided the metal areas on their kit would be a burnished brass or copper. I used a variety of Citadel Colour metallic paints to build up from a darker base to the worn and shiny outermost parts – I’d recommend Warplock Bronze and Screaming Bell highlights, finished with an incredibly light drybrush of Canoptek Alloy at the very edge.
I always feel the most striking warbands on the tabletop use a limited palette, usually only three or four main colours – and with a lot of sombre brown, matte black, and dulled brass on the gang I needed to make them pop a little.
Night stinger spiders have a bright orange stripe on their abdomen, and I took that as inspiration to make the power cabling, tubing, and accents a suitably garish orange – this looks particularly good as heavy industrial rubber, like the hover skirt on the grav-vehicle and the gangers' hoses. A coat of Magmadroth Orange Contrast straight over the White Scar undercoat was already looking great but adding shading with Gryph-hound Orange Contrast and a few subtle highlights with Troll Slayer Orange really made it stand out. Some of the fighters are equipped with energy shields – these have been left in the natural green plastic, with the shield bosses painted before assembly.
Hitting the Road
The vehicles started out with a Chaos Black undercoat, as I find the large flat panels of armoured vehicles harder to work with using Contrast paint. While I would normally airbrush tank-type vehicles, I wanted these to look battered and worn, so I instead decided to heavily drybrush them up from the black undercoat with successively lighter applications of grey – lighter both in terms of colour, and the intensity of drybrush. Finally, I gave both vehicles some edge highlighting with a subtle application of Flayed One Flesh to represent the dust of the ash wastes.
Vision blocks received a Corax White base coat, before being shaded with Briar Queen Chill Contrast. I added chipping to the battle-worn armour by dabbing small sections with Runefang Steel, then lining the edges of these areas with Abaddon Black Air paint – which is thinner than the Base paint version – to create the illusion of paint peeling away. The grav-cutters had the same treatment but with less battle damage, as I expect the younger gangers are really proud of their boards!
Final Touches
To fit in with the ash wastes, I decided to cover the Augmek’s cloak with a desert camo scheme. This started with a Zandri Dust base, which I drybrushed up to a lighter shade by adding some white to the mix. I then selected different shades of tan, brown, green, and cream to add as mottled blotches, stippling them on carefully to avoid too much of a hard edge between colours. Lastly, I gave the whole cloak a glaze of Seraphim Sepia to further blend the mottling together while retaining the camouflage effect.
House Van Saar pays a terrible price for its technical supremacy, and its members all suffer from radiation sickness in some form or another. To represent this affliction I started with a really pale flesh tone – my fave again, Flayed One Flesh – and gave them a sickly grey palor with a coat of Dreadful Visage. The ravages of rad-sickness were further marked out by painting small dots of Volupus Pink on their faces, to represent lesions and sores. Hair was a case of picking a suitable natural colour, and then using a wash of Agrax Earthshade to deepen the folds and recesses.
At this point they looked great… but way too clean. To help them blend into both the underhive and the ash wastes I created ‘hybrid’ bases, by using the standard Necromunda bases and covering up sections of the industrial surface with clumps of Aggaros Dunes Technical paint. In underhive games they look like they’re moving through an ill-maintained or rubble-strewn street, while on outdoor battlefields they appear to be fighting over industrial outposts half-swallowed by the desert. I painted these bases with Leadbelcher, weathered them with Nuln Oil, added some grime and wear with Ryza Rust and Nurgle's Rot slime. Then I finished off the ash and sand that has spilled over all of this with a drybrush of, you guessed it, Flayed One Flesh!
I then heavily drybrushed them from boot soles to knees (and also the lower parts of the vehicles) with Terminatus Stone, before adding some Blood For The Blood God to bases and weapons.
The Night Stingers have been doing pretty well in the campaign, and I’m now looking to add a few more ash wastes specialists – starting with the updated ash waste grav-cutter rules, tossing in some heads and packs from the upgrade kit… and I think it’s finally time to recruit a sturdy Ash Wastes Arachi-rig for future games!
If you’d rather paint your Van Saar in the traditional shadowy green, the Warhammer Painting Team have prepared a video showing you how: