Feat of Service Custom Legion Warlock

It’s that time of year again! Around Memorial day for the past two years, my gaming club has put on a fundraising event called Feat of Service. The purpose is to raise $$ for the Wounded Warrior Project.

I participated in the Custom Caster event, which is aimed at more casual players (there’s a 50-pt ADR Masters event for the more competitively minded). The general idea is to create a new, custom Warcaster for your chosen faction and then play several 35-pt games all day trying for achievements much like a book release event. It’s effectively a mash-up of Who’s the Boss, Spell Draft and Summer Rampage

The process itself is pretty simple.

Pick a warcaster or warlock from Prime or Primal (essentially, any of the warcasters or warlocks that are free in War Room)
Strip off the spell list, keep the weapons, feat and back-of-the-card abilities (as well as any other abilities on the model like Stealth or Pathfinder, etc).
Change the model’s original faction & system to your chosen one (for example, Vlad1 could become a Troll Warlock, and all instances of “warjack” on his card would become “warbeast”).
Build a 25-pt list using your new Warcaster’s WB/WJ points, but without knowing what spells you’ll have. You do know your feat and back-of-the-card abilities.
Spell Draft 8 spells with three other participants. We use only the spells from the Warcasters and Warlocks you can choose from in step 1.
You keep FOCUS-1 or FURY-2 spells, depending on what system you’re using (Warmachine or Hordes)
Flesh out your 25-pt list to 35-points.
Buy parts and build & paint a custom model to represent your new character Warcaster
Play games, earn achievements, win prizes!

Ok, so now that you know how the process works, here’s my journey through it.

I started knowing I wanted to play Legion. I wasn’t sure what chassis (spell-less Warcaster) I wanted to use. I was considering Deneghra, imagining her feat as a big wave of blight that crippled everything nearby, and I considered a few other models, but ended up with Deneghra1. So, I take her cards, ditch all the spells, and she now is considered a Legion Warlock, with 7 FURY.

I then drafted up a 25-point list. Not knowing what spells I would end up with meant it was really beneficial to start with a very balanced core list. I knew I needed to feed that 7 FURY, so I threw in a Ravagore and Carnivean. 7 FURY is enough to pass around Spiny Growth if I need to, and I just love the Carni’s model. The Ravagore’s self explanatory. with Deneghra’s ridiculously high defenses, a Shredder also made sense. This left me with 7 points, which let me take a full unit of Legionnaires and a Shepherd. I knew I was likely to add a third heavy, so paying for the FURY support now made sense.

So, my list looks like this:

Deneghra 1
* Carnivean
* Ravagore
* Shredder
10 Legionnaires
Shepherd

The next step is to draft spells. I didn’t take super detailed notes on what I had each round, but the six I ended up keeping out of the eight I drafted were:

Deflection
Incite
Hoarfrost
Torment
Teleport

So, I had some solid “gotcha” zots, a solid (legion-y) battlegroup buff, an army-wide defense buff and a get-out-of-jail-free card. Pretty awesome. My warlock’s shaping up to be a huntress, or troubleshooter (in that she tracks down the trouble and shoots it).

I needed to flesh out my list, though, so I took a look at what was painted, and decided that a Seraph and Forsaken would do fine. I’ve fallen hard for the Seraph. I don’t think it can kill stuff at all, but damn is Slipstream handy. It gets 2″ of extra threat on anything in the army – the Carnivean, Ravagore, Denny or Forsaken. People are pretty used to their threat ranges, and the Seraph lets you catch them when they think they’re safe.

So, that decided, I needed a model. Legion Warlocks are always female, so I needed legion-y female parts that weren’t from an existing warlock. I found some solid parts in the Sorceress on Hellion and Beast Mistress. As soon as I realized I’d need to do a female model I knew I wanted to use Annyssa Ryvaal‘s head.

So, I ordered the parts and got to work. I decided I wanted to use the Beast Mistress’ legs and the Sorceress’ torso and arms. Even her weapon was perfect.

I cut the Beast Mistress in half, like a cheap magician at a birthday party. Her torso went into the bitz box, and the rest of her from the waist down remained.

Next, I removed the Sorcerss’ head with clippers and then used some Dremel tools to make a concave surface at her neck, where the scarf/cape is. The sorceress model has some feathers around her neck, but they were almost impossible to keep. I also cut off her legs and then carefully removed her hips. They’re molded into the cape and her torso, so the Jewelry saw earned it’s keep.

There was a fair bit of grinding involved to get a decent join between the two halves, so it didn’t look like she had a spine in the shape of a Z. But, I think it all turned out well: