The Comm Guild Maelstrom's Edge

Spiral Arm Studios are proud to present our latest release in our continuing one release per month cycle - Karist Heavy Weapons.

These weapons are resin, with slightly up-armoured Karist troopers carrying and operating them. One of the weapons can now be added to your basic Karist Trooper squads for +1 to +2 points, or you can build an entirely new Anvil unit with two heavy weapons - the Karist Trooper Heavy Squad.

Weapon and unit rules are available on the Karist online unit cards section of the Maelstrom's Edge website.

The models are available for purchase right now at the Maelstrom's Edge store.

You'll also notice that the kit comes with a Karist trooper head which has the mask removed, revealing the human underneath.

The above model is also demonstrating the alternate arm option, holding a cybel ammo cannister. Parts are broadly interchangeable with the rest of the Karist range, opening up further options and conversion possibilities!

The Karist Angel was the final sculpt which we completed from the Battle for Zycanthus set. While the core of the model was completed quite early on, one of our first sculpts in fact, the limbs and details were quite a challenge to create. Here are some early pieces of concept art for the mature angel...

We wanted the Karist centrepiece model to be visually striking and much taller than anything else in the box set, which meant we had quite a lot of limitations with regards to sprue size and cost restrictions which stopped us from doing plastic wings. Each angel has three different morphing modes of which wings is just one option, so not getting wings in to the set was not a big issue for us. Trying to come up with some limbs that did not look comical and still showed the model capable of flowing and reforming took a lot of design iterations though.

Ultimately the mature Angel ended up as a fairly static pose for such a dynamic creature, with two alternate sets of claws that had little major difference between them, but with the benefit that the model is very easy to convert. Between the shapes being the easiest thing to sculpt (sausages of putty!), and the existing model being very easy to repose, we've seen a great range of conversions, and the model being so forgiving allows all manner of experimentation. Even boiling the plastic allows it to soften and be reposed in any shape without the obvious distortion you'd see from a model with sharp edges and lines.

The sprue is a sliding core sprue which makes such a large model have practically no visible seams, despite being completely made of plastic.

The legspan of the model is huge as well, and led to the creation of our huge bases. This was possible thanks to success in our kickstarter project allowing us to fund the tooling.

We've previously covered TP^DC Deputy Manager's excellent mature Angel, and this minnow complements it very well, with a similar basing scheme and colourscheme. The monochromatic base really helps draw the eye to the purple and pink in the minnow.

The Comm Guild's community spotlight focuses on sharing something from the Maelstrom's Edge community each week, if you have anything you'd like to get in to the queue, please get in touch with us via the Maelstrom's Edge website

Following up on our previous post about the Karist Keeper, we wanted to highlight a recent conversion by Iain, showing a Keeper that is even closer to the design aesthetic we are trying to accomplish:

This entire model was build by utilising spare parts from the Kaddar Nova sprue, Shadow Walker sprue, Karist Trooper sprue and Faction Expansion Sprue.

The official model is in active development at the moment, but as with all plastics, it is a very slow process!

- by Iain Wilson

The new Faction Expansion Sprue saw the addition of new units to the game for both the Karist and Epirian factions, with extra components to add to the original plastic kits. This seemed like a great chance to expore the versatility of these kits, by looking at different ways to build the new units.


We've already had a look at the Epirian Suppression Team, so this time around I'm having a play with the Karist Praetorians. These veteran warriors are immediately recognisable with their massive Cybel Glaives, or the smaller but deadly Cybel Blade.



The sprue comes with an open hand for holding the Cybel Glaive in a single-handed grip. For the other arm, you can use the arm with clenched fist from the Karist trooper sprue, or the pointing arm from the Expansion sprue, as in the studio images above and below.



With a little cutting and gluing, though, you can use the rifle support hand from the Epirian Contractor sprue on one of the Karist left arms to create a two-handed grip like this:



The left hand will look slightly different to the right, as the Karists have a flat plate on the backs of their gloves which the Epirian hand will lack, but painted up like the other glove it won't be particularly noticable.

Both the Cybel Glaive and the Cyble Blade can be glued to the models' backs, to leave hands free for ranged weapons.



For Cybel Blade-equipped models, you can use the clenched fists which can be found on the Karist Trooper sprue or the Expansion Sprue to hold the sword, by cutting the hand grip off the sword and gluing to the top of the fist, and gluing the bottom of the hand grip to the bottom of the fist. You need to trim off a little of the grip to correspond to the part that would be in the model's hand, otherwise you wind up with a very long handle. You may find it sits better if you sand or file down the top of the fist a little to make sure you have a flat surface to glue the sword onto.



You can achieve some slightly more dynamic posing and make your Praetorians stand out a little more from regular Troopers by using Shadow Walker legs, as below:



It's possible to equip a Praetorian with both a rifle (including a Ripper Grenade Launcher or Radwave Emitter) and a Cybel Blade. If you would like to avoid having to sling one of the weapons on the model's back, you can always combine them both into a single pole-arm:



This was made by cutting away part of the fore-grip on the grenade launcher, trimming the handle off a Cybel Blade and gluing it in place. I then sliced off the back of the grenade launcher directly behind the drum magazine, and attached the shaft of a Cybel Glaive.

For an alternate take on the iconic Cybel Glaive, I tried going the other way and removing the shaft. The blades were attached to the model's forearms, and the power unit glued onto the model's back:



There are plenty of other possibilities for personalising your units from this sprue, or for creating new unit options for your own home-brew rules, like this model armed with a Cybel Halberd, made by flipping the Glaive's blade upside down, and Energy Shield taken from a Kaddar Nova's backpack:



...or this Angel Keeper, built from Kaddar Nova legs, a Shadow Walker torso, Karist Trooper arms and the shaft of a Cybel Glaive, with a mask made by trimming down a Kaddar Nova's crown.



(We'll be looking at Angel Keepers in a little more depth, and sharing a tutorial for building your own, in an upcoming article very soon...)

And finally, if overkill is your thing, here's a Kaddar Nova who clearly favours getting in close and personal with his enemies:






Why not have a try and see what you can come up with yourself? You can pick up the Faction Expansion Sprue in a handy 3-pack in the Maelstrom's Edge Online Store here.

You'll also need the Karist Trooper Sprue (here) for the standard Praetorian builds, or the Shadow Walker (here) or Kaddar Nova (here) sprues for the more adventurous conversions.

Feel free to share your creations on the Comm Guild Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/groups/MaelstromsEdge) - We would love to see what you do with your Praetorian units!

The Karist forces take heavy visual and technological inspiration from the Angels that they alone have managed to contain and manipulate both on and off the battlefield. Minnows are the immature form of Angels, and are captured by Karists in deep space and then trained and raised into mature Angels.

Design

As with mature Angels, the core of a minnow is immutable, with void gel extruding from the body and being manipulated by the Angel. Minnows have very limited control over this void gel, so unlike the mature Angel cannot form claws, talons and similar on demand, but instead have wings and small claws which they can manipulate for speed and mobility, making them useful battlefield tools for the Karists. Angels are great conversion fodder for this reason, as you can take the immutable core as a starting point and then go nuts with greenstuff on the void gel sections.

Plastics

The Angel Minnow sprue is worth a mention for the technical complexity involved in its production. Normally, a plastic sprue is produced with a two part tool, which means detail has to flow to each side of the tool. The Angel Minnow plastic sprue was built with Sliding Core technology, which means instead of having a two or three part body, we were able to make the core of the model a single piece by using a 4 part tool instead of a 2 part tool. This allows the mouth of the minnow to sink back into the body instead of being flush or a separate face part with a nasty join line. As a result of this, the sprue has no frame around the outer edge and the Angel Minnows are probably the easiest models in the entire Maelstrom's Edge range to assemble.

Weapons

Armed with a deadly Cybel Pulse attack, Angel Minnows have both ranged and close quarters capability, and coupled with their speed can quickly outflank and decimate an opposing squad.

If you'd like to hear more about Angel Minnows, the audiobook A Keeper's Duty follows the Karist capture of larger/end-stage minnows on a decaying space station.

This week's community spotlight is this fantastic Angel conversion by Benjamin Jelley. The elevated base looks awesome enough, but spreading the limbs out to more of a climbing pose completely changes, and massively enhances, the dynamism of the model. We think it is a great piece of work!

The Comm Guild's community spotlight focuses on sharing something from the Maelstrom's Edge community each week, if you have anything you'd like to get in to the queue, please get in touch with us via the Maelstrom's Edge website

Developing models in plastic is a very slow process with a lot of complicated factors involved. We start developing models about 24 months before they come out, and thought it might be interesting if we provide some early previews of stuff instead of sitting on it until the last minute! These previews are things we are actively working on, but you should assume a conservative time scale when we talk about them here!

One that is a pretty obvious model is the Karist Angel Keeper. It is no secret that we'd love to be able to field a force entirely made up of Angels, and the key to such a force would be a powerful HQ unit. A number of places in the fluff describe the Angel Keeper, including the audiobook "A Keeper's Duty" which is entirely about a trainee Keeper and their charges. This means that the model is fairly well defined, and currently undergoing artistic design.

Unusually, we've got the rules in a fairly good place even though it will still be quite a while until the model is out. This means you can try one out today by building your own, or proxying one with another model from your collection.

The awesome Insaniak on Dakka made his own Keeper conversion with a bunch of spare parts and bits box parts and it looks like this:

Here are the current target stats for the Angel Keeper from our master Rules overseer - yakface:

• Command unit. His detachment can include 1-4 Angel core units, 0-2 Angel hammer units (none of these exist yet), 0-2 Angel vanguard units (none of these exist yet) & 0-2 Angel anvil units.
  
• He would be somewhere in the realm of 8-9 points.
  
• His stats would be: MV7, EVS3, SKL3, AV3, MAS2, FOR2, WP4. Model type: Infantry (human, character).
  
• He'd be armed with some kind of CQ weapon (that you could imagine him using to punish the Angels when they're not behaving properly) and a Ripper Grenade Launcher that would fire Swarmer Grenade rounds. Might have to tone down the Swarmer Grenade rounds to only being 'psych 2D3' (instead of the normal 'psych 3D3')...although this could easily be justified by saying that the fired grenades are not quite as big and therefore don't carry as much na-cybel as the thrown version. He'd probably have the option to take traditional 'Ripper' rounds in the grenade launcher (to give him an actual gun that can deal damage if you want to pay the points for it).
  
• He'd have the 'Angel Handler' & 'Command (1)' abilities. His big other ability would be to remove the 'Kill Mission' ability from Minnow units within a certain range of him (probably the normal command range of 18"), thereby allowing those units to capture mission objectives (while they're close enough to him).
  

Finally, if you have one or more Angel Keeper in your force, you'd be able to swap out your standard faction objective for the 'First Contact' faction objective.

This faction objective would give all Angel units (units with at least 50% angel models) the 'Fearsome (1)' ability, or +1 to their Fearsome ability if they already have one. Any time a non-fearless enemy unit fails its activation discipline check while affected by the Fearsome ability of an Angel unit, you gain +1 VP. You can gain a maximum of 3 VPs this way, and once you have, the 'fearsome' ability bonus immediately ends.

If you have a go at using an Angel Keeper in your force, please let us know how you get on with it!

Our friday posts here at the comm guild are photos of a model in a colour scheme that we might not have shared before (or much at least), an interesting conversion or whatever takes our fancy!

Today's inaugural post are these Karist troopers in a striking red and white colourscheme.

These troopers were painted by lil'legend studios, and are a colour scheme of their own invention. Red works so well on Karists, but changing the cybel glow on the weapon to that greenish-blue colour really makes them pop nicely. We actually have a full force of Karists painted up in these colours and will be sharing more photos of them over the coming months.