Dok’s Shop – The Laer

Welcome to Dok’s Shop! In this feature we’ll go over how we went about creating one of our conversion projects.

At the Great Crusade event we attended last weekend, a lot of time and effort had been put into creating an awesome campaign pack with the rules for all sorts of Xenos factions encountered by the legions. When I saw the Laer had rules I knew I had to make some; the temptation to build the cause of the Emperor’s Children’s downfall was too much!

Having decided I was going to make some, I started gathering images and descriptions of the Laer. Fulgrim was the natural starting point which describes the main combat branch of the Laer in some detail, describing how they all have snake like bodies, two sets of arms and chitinous bug heads. Each was armed with two swords and the lower arms fired blasts of green energy.

Armed with this info I started looking for suitable models and narrowed it down to the Tyranid Raveners or the Sslyth models. I eventually settled on the sslyth because they were already armoured and looked a bit more lithe. Their heads were too snakey though, and then someone recommended the T’au Vespids, so I acquired a squad of them (the bodies I’ve saved to turn into some Xenos mercenaries for Inq 28). The Vespid heads fit pretty well onto the Sslyth bodies, needing only a little bit of greenstuff to sit right.

Finally I needed weapons for them; in Fulgrim they are described as being armed with sabre like swords, so I rounded up as many charnabal sabres as I could beg, borrow and steal from people! With all my bits arranged I started converting.

This is the final product after building. Even though I was using the same stock body, I wanted to try and convert them a little bit to make them seem different. I’m particularly happy with the Laer holding the marine helmet, this will be painted purple as a nod to the bloodthirsty campaign. The third one is made up as some sort of squad leader in case I ever decide to expand the unit.

In terms of painting, I was in a bit of a rush to get them finished for the campaign so they’re not my best work and I will probably go back and finish them off at some point in the future. Their armour is described as a bright silver, but there is nothing about what colour they were, so I stuck with a white/purple (its slaanesh’s favourite after all).

They performed quite well on the table top, killing a few models here and there. There most useful rule was making those in base contact take blind checks; a surprising number of marines failed this meaning they were much easier to cut down!

Overall they were a fun unit to convert up, and I’m sorely tempted to make more of them and re-enact Solomon’s bold charge up the centre into the massed Laer…