N:AW Escher Gang

On Necromunda, the industry and population of the planet is divided up by noble and minor houses that rule under the Imperial house.  One of the minor houses is the Escher, or the House of Blades, a house with a gene curse to produce vanishingly few healthy males, and so consequently the majority of Escher house is female.  

All of this background story stuff is fun and all, but the important thing is that the Escher are cool miniatures.  Supported by four plastic kits and a dozen or so resin figures, the Escher are popular, and have also featured in the main starter boxes for the 2017 version of Necromunda. Being in starter boxes means that the main gang miniatures are cheap... which is the real reason I got them.  A very cheap eBay buy (watch for those Buy it nows!), an added box, the house book, some bitz and scratch building and I built a 1400 credit Ash Waste gang, complete with a vehicle and two bikes.  Painting took a while because the Escher have a lot of fine detail and I wanted to them to stand out. 

Since these figures are as near to finished as they are likely to get for a while, here are some pictures. 

Full Escher gang for Necromunda Ash Wastes

This is a 1400 cred gang, with six foot gangers, two on bikes, a car, and then some characters to lead them (and actually get the kills), as well as one hanger-on. 

Regular Escher gangers

These gangers are nearly out of the box.  From the left we have a ganger with a converted shotgun, normal ganger with laspistol and sword, juve with club and auto pistol, ganger using the Wyld maiden body, ganger with auto gun, and a specialist that I could not afford to give a special weapon too... 

Toxicologist, Death Maiden, Queen, and Matriarch with grenade launcher

These are all conversions.  The Toxicologist (chemist) is from the Rogue Trader set, with added Escher head, and the "poof" of skull smoke is from the Empire Wizards kit.  The Death Maiden (she has retuned from the dead via chemistry) has bits from the official Death maiden kit, a body from the Warhammer Underworlds Dread Pageant, and a head from a banshee, plus some clumsy putty work.  The gang Queen (leader) is also from the Dread Pageant, with added chainsword, bolter, head, and various Escher bitz.  She is a beatstick who has killed a lot of Orlocks in our games.  The final figure is the matriarch (champion), who is made from the official matriarch/death maiden miniature, and has an added grenade launcher. 

Escher bikers

Part of the difficulty of playing Necromunda outside, is that you have to be able to zip around the ash wastes.  All of the gangs can add a "ash waster dirtbike" which is a catch all for a piece of wargear that increases movement at the expense of weapons.  I converted these two from Witch Elves, and again some clumsy putty work.  Their jetbikes are 3d prints that I designed and printed.  Unfortunately, they are sort of crude, and hard to take pictures of, as their original poses made it a bit tough to integrate with the jet bikes.  In the distant campaign future, I will probably get more jetbikes for the other gangers but just as sabot bases for the regular figures... learned my lesson with these two! 

Now if you are looking at these figures and thinking "those poses are a bit wonky"... well SOMEONE had the bright idea to magnetize the bases so they could have "outside" and "inside" bases, basically allowing for the figures to be used either in regular Necromunda or in the Ash Wastes version... which was not as successful as you might hope. Some of the figures worked out just fine, but several of them are wonky on one or the other of the bases, or both... and a single small magnet means that any sort of shear force causes the poor miniature to fall right off.  So not sure I would recommend this, although it does look cool on the ones where it does work. 

Clown car

Drive-bys required

Chariot rear in use! 

The final member of the gang is in fact a car.  In N:AW, vehicles generally are generic, driven by generic scum, not full gang members, but that is lame, so I painted the driver as if she were an Escher.  This one is converted from a Tamiya 1/48 Beatle that I had in my stash, a ton of 3d printing, and a driver that used the original plastic sentinel driver body (somehow there have been FIVE more plastic sentinels since this one!).  The conversions jacked up the suspension, added the huge engine, This conversion actually took the most time, both in terms of the 3d design, and the actual assembly.   I think there is more superglue than plastic in some parts.  Super crap in game since anything stronger than a pistol can kill it in one shot, but I love it, and love the image of the gang Queen riding her chariot. 

Plenty more Necromunda to come, just need to finish painting it.  (or blog about it)