With the Zanatorians completed I can now concentrate on getting my Grots back on the board after their long break since the release of 5th edition.

The army has been broken into two parts the first is what needs to be redone for the display at Warhammer World on the 16th January next year. Learning how to paint the army using the foundation and washes instead of the crude watered down paint and drybrushing I used last time. This will include the 4 veteran squads, grot command and the ninja, as well as improving some of the units that I’m not longer using just for the display.

The 2nd part is the new stuff, first off is the 2nd Grot mobile café to pair up with ‘The Little Grot’ so far it looks like it’s gonna be called ‘Stargrots coffee’ also there’s grot air command and the 5 transport vehicles ‘the doom-vees’

The only thing I’m struggling to do is come up with a valkrie conversion for the grots! Any ideas?

As always I’ll be looking for feedback from you all and posting polls about my ideas, till then.

First off will likely be my grot ninja.

THE ZANATORIANS HAVE DONE IT!!!

Sadly I didn’t win best army, I was so disappointed… Then it was announced that there was an award for best converted army called ‘The Big Mek Award’ AND I WON IT: [link]

AND THAT’S NOT ALL OF IT.

After the judging at lunch time I found a card on my table underneath on of the miniatures, GW is interested in displaying the Zanatorian Machine Cult in the Miniatures Hall at Warhammer World.

Which is fantastic, so at the beginning of next year they will be on display at Warhammer World for 2 months! They have also requested the Grot Rebellion to be displayed alongside the Zanatorians.

I’m so glad that this army has worked at so well, thanks for all your feedback guys.

Only 6 days left till the Zanatorians make their appearance at the Open War on the 31st, Personally I could come stone dead last in the tourney and not care all I'm after is the 'Best Army' award like the Grot Rebellion won in April 2008.

The Zanatorians are already and hit, I was playing a game at my local GW the other day and two strangers walked in and pointed at my army and yelled 'The Zanatorians!', I knew my army was liked on the web but never expected it to be called by it's proper name.

Anyway the army has be touched up to the best I can do. Now all thats left is the fluff, which sadly I was unable to get a comic shorted in time so I'm going to shorten in down to a paragraph and have it supported by some codex page style artwork thats currentling be worked on kindly by ~tyrantwache.

THE COUNTDOWN HAS BEGUN TO THE FIRST 'ZANATORIAN STEEL CRUSADE!'

The Zanatorian project is nearing completion with only a few touch ups left to go. And thanks to ~Warpzero I also have a nice codex cover to go with them.

Now for a crucial part of the project, the origins comic. People tend to look at comics more than a few pages of just words. This was demonstrated when the grot rebellion comic got a lot of attention from people viewing the army and player’s commented on how they loved the amount of character the grots had.

Anyway the good news is I’ve found an artist to do the comic for me, she says she’ll be able to get two pages done before open war and she’ll finish the rest of the pages afterwards. She is currently drawing up an Iron Guard robot for me to judge whether the art style suits the army.

However the bad news is I’m having difficulty creating a comic that presents the fantastic fluff behind the Zanatorian Machine cult effectively. My first attempt was awful and my doubts were pointed out by ~wordbearer and ~CrabTasterMan (thanks for the useful crit guys) who mentioned that the guard setting was too shallow and there was little chance these guardsmen would know the things they knew about the Zanatorians, plus the descriptions of the machines were a little too cheesy. Plus the Zanatorians sounded ‘too good’ this is the 40k universe no one is supposed to be perfect!

Anyway I’m asking for suggestions and even rough drafts for a 2nd attempt at the Zanatorian Machine Cult Origins comic, I’ve written a summary of their fluff below.

Zanatorians Background – [link]

THEY WON BEST PRIZE AT THE SUMMER WAR TOURNAMENT AT WARHAMMER WORLD! AS WELL AS COMING 2ND PLACE JUST A FEW PTS BEHIND THE WINNER

It was a great day, allowing me to test the army's performance and see how people reacted to it. Everyone loved the army and best of all no one had a problem with the 'counts as' rule that the army is built around. Most importantly the judges for Open War which is the tournament this army was built for loved the models and couldn't wait to see them appear in their tournament.

The Games
The army's performance was excellent! I had made some changes to the original list. 1st off was I had downgraded the Lord Of Change to a winged daemon prince as all I was after was a nasty combat unit to defend my fragile units from close combat and the LOC wasn’t built for that, it also freed up an extra 110pts. The next change was shifting the icons from the horror squads because the conversions looked awful to the chariot and plaguebearers allowing me to have one icon on offense and have another zipping round the board at 12 inches a turn allowing me to spread out my forces better.

In the first round I wiped out a whole Eldar army with the exception of the Avatar which I avoided altogether. The Robot of the round had to be the flamers who annihilated 9 striking scorpions upon deep striking in the first turn and held up the champion and avatar for 2 turns with their inv saves.

Second round I was up against some orks which I thought was going to be interesting as I my army’s weapons will cut down orks easy but if they get into combat with me it could turn nasty. But once again the army shined losing only 1 squad of horrors to a 30 boy dog pile on an objective I was holding I managed to wipe out the entire ork army. Robots of the round this time was the Deathstalkers (Plaguebearers) who put up a fantastic fight against a large mob of storm boyz and Zagstruk for 3 turns before I threw in a prince to finish up.

Now in the 3rd round I fought against an army led by the raven guard special character and it quite scary to see 10 assault terminators fleeting across the board towards my lines. First off I threw my flamers at them and only killed 1 terminator the captain broke off and charged them while the terminators continued towards my lines. He was later cut down by a shot from the chariot when he failed his fleet roll and was left in the open. The rest of his army wasn’t the problem and the deathstalkers and avatar were already closing in on his objective, whilst the horrors were shooting down any marines that go close to mine.
I was eventually able to slow the terminators down with the Nurglings who kept them back for 2 turns and even killed 2 of them allowing me to bring my princes around to cut down their enemy squad.

A very successful first day for the Zanatorian Machine Cult!

Now all that is left is squad markings and 2 flamers 2 horrors and 1 plaguebearer to bolster up the ranks for 1750pt game plus the Ratling Frodo objective.