More Col Iron Beard Command Squad Chaos Squats: Slag Zwartwaal

The next 3 Hungry Ghosts from the Col Iron Beard Command Squad have no significant conversions. They were painted a while ago as a break from painting Eldar, before I became obsessed with the Space Dwarfs, and realized that their smaller surface area made for faster painting. So these bearded-battle-brothers will appear in the heat of battle for extra excitement.

First up is Trooper Slag Zwartwaal. He is one of my oldest Squats, the only Bob Olley sculpt in a Space Dwarfs blister pack of 5. Here we see Slag from the front, ambushing a Space Pirate with his autogun. Zwartwaal is one of the Bob Olley designs that are hard to convert- the man doesn't like non-textured surfaces, and usually keeps any weapons or other gear in a position that makes it tough to swap them. But I can't promise that I won't give in to the urge to convert him at some point.

The ungulate skull on Slag's base is a metal bit, not from GW, but I can't remember where. Our Space Pirate is a GW model, and is an old Space Marine wearing Mark 3 Iron Armor. Iron Beard's warriors are facing a mixed band of pirates, including Orks and other less well-defined entities. And let's recall that Col Iron Beard himself is from the poorly-publicized Squat Pirates series.

Col Iron Beard and Zwartwaal from above, showing the integration of Slag's gun with both arms, chest, and beard; a strong thwart to the would-be mutator. Zwartwaal already comes with strange cybernetic additions to his head as well.

In this picture, the Hungry Ghosts face off with Rogue Trader era Eldar. The commander Lessei Moondancer is not merely pointing his waybread-stained finger at Col Iron Beard, but is armed with a Jokaero Digital Weapon. Made by strange orangutan-like aliens that were strangely re-introduced as an elite option for the Grey Knights army last year (with a similar miniature available from Reaper), these tiny versions of powerful guns could wreak havoc upon the playability of a carefully planned scenario under the Rogue Trader rules (when a Games Master was part of the 40K system).

Iron Beard's team is joined by some fellow Khorne Renegades, an Ex-Tech from the RT601 Adventurers series, and Hacker Harris and Catachan Luke from the RT7 Mercenaries series (which featured Squat No.1 Irn Bonce). Here they face the nefarious mutant champions of Tzeentch and Slaanesh.

Zwartwaal has one small addition, a skull with nails driven in it placed snugly in the gap at the back of his belt between pouches and pistol (from one of the Inquisitor-scale Arco-Flagellants).

What is Catachan Luke looking at?

Sneaky Harlequins!