Back in 8th Edition WFB my favorite faction was Tomb Kings. I was super bummed when they didn't make it over into Age of Sigmar proper but have found other armies to scratch my itches (look for a post on my Cities of Sigmar cog force a little down the road). Over the past year I've also started to flesh out my own little corner of Chamon (partially inspired by Mengel Miniature's Endless Desert area.)
Known as the Ironchaff Plain, this area has a City of Sigmar, Slivers, founded a couple of generations ago by a Dawnbringer's Crusade. The explorers and inhabitants of Slivers have found a number of interesting locations and ruins in the area. One of these ruins is a series of ancient cave or tunnel entrances with carved columns and glyphs around them. No one that has entered these tunnels has ever returned but rumors of giant cave spiders and stunted armored cannibals are frequently repeated when these ruins are discussed. Think Petra, but spookier.
As this setting has come into focus for me, the idea of an underground faction that is the remnant of a great civilization driven underground during the Age of Chaos came into focus. Pulling elements from Tomb Kings and Flesh Eater Courts, I am thinking the descendants of the survivors of this ancient empire still wearing rusted and pitted armor and weapons, worshipping the few remaining constructs (and the spiders are constructs, blame the Red Harvest teases that have been coming out and now the preview!) that were built and powered either through magic or eternal engines back in the hey-day of the civilization.
Let's start with some hero units.
The first idea combines Skaven, FEC, and Gloomspite components. If we take the head and halberd of the Gyrmwatch Underworld's warband and put it on Thanquol we get a nice looking leader type. While the angle of the models on the GW website doesn't do us any favors, I "think" the scale will work for a head and weapon swap. Next, throw this guy up on an Arachnarok Spider, just don't use any of the Forest Goblin bits, and I think we have a great hero on monster unit. Think of him as a cave-dwelling cannibal who still believes he is the leader of a great civilization and in his delusion thinks the cave spider he is riding is actually one of the constructs from the glory days. Base this on some of the Dominion of Sigmar ruins, paint it like neither has seen daylight in a long time and i think the theme would really shine through.
Speaking of constructs, what if there was an ancient surviving construct that still worked? At this point, it would probably be revered and worshipped by these crazy lunatics as a god beast. After all, this is inspired by Tomb Kings so it has to have some sort of construct!
Let's go with Necrons for our bits for this one. The Triarch Stalker and Canoptek Spyder are great starting points for all the pieces needed to build us a spider construct. This is a pretty popular conversion, a simple Google search will result in tons of images like the ones below.
I think I would stay pretty main stream with this one, doing something like the image below, then adding a bunch of texture paint to either give the effect of old cracked stone/marble or tons of rust, this would hide a lot of the more high tech details and give it a really aged looked. The Necrons range also has the Canoptek Wraiths kit which could be used with the Canoptek Spyder legs (leftover from this conversion to make some smaller scorpion style constructs)
With two big monsters for this army, we can move on to some infantry.
Our leader riding the spider is already tattered and hunched over so let's stick with Skaven for our infantry base. Taking the Clanrats kit, chopping off the heads and tails and adding some crypt ghoul heads should give us a great looking, hunched over, seen better days infantry option. Despite my best efforts at bad photoshop, I couldn't seem to get the models to work together with the angles on the GW webstore, but I think by looking at the two models side by side you can get a pretty good idea. It does bring up a question of shields, the Skaven ones are just too Skaven. Ungor or Gor shields would work but I think the best fit, if you could find them would be the old skeleton warrior shields, it would really show a level of decay from civilization that I want with these troops.
Heck, over on Gardens of Hectate, they used Lord of the Rings Goblin heads on the Skaven Underworld warband so I'm 98% sure this idea would work in terms of scale. See their conversion here.
We need at least one more infantry unit, let's go with a monstrous infantry sized idea. Down in the dark things have gone pretty sideways over the generations. Turning to cannibalism to survive some of these things have grown larger than the rest. Using the Crypt Horror model as a base size, let's try to give it a few more clues of a fallen civilization. I think either Orruk Brutes or Ogor Mournfangs have the best bits for this. Both have armor bits that could be attached to the Crypt Horror to show some clues towards past civilization. The Brutes torso may even work on the Crypt Horror legs. For weapons, I would lean towards the Ogor Stonehorn/Thundertusk rider weapons. Combine the Crypt Horror bone weapons with that bone trap thing and the crossbow would give some nice visual clues of a decayed civilization that is using what is left along with what the currently have.
This is a really rough mock-up and I am not familiar with any of these kits so I do not know if the size works but if I was to build this I think I would go in the direction of getting the Crypt Horrors and the Brutes, seeing if the size worked and then trying to find some of the Ogor rider weapon bits and add them in.
Adding more heros is fairly easy, for example, some ideas on a foot hero and wizard.
To wrap this up, I really like the idea and lore behind this concept. But, it has some weaknesses too. There are some spider themes with the big units but they do not carry through to the smaller units. Maybe adding some of the small spiders from the Arachnarok kit onto the infantry would help. Also the larger infantry armor doesn't match that of the skaven base models used for the other foot troops. I think paint schemes and basing could help tie it together but it would need to definitely be considered to really sell this concept.
Lastly, the recently announced Warcry Red Harvest box contains a spider cult that could go with this theme. Would they be citizens of a City of Sigmar that worships this decayed civilization? Do they replace the foot troops?
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