Warhammer: The War for the Eye - Ekushkya Tactical Squad

Bled white upon the soil of Terra, hounded to the shores of the Eye of Terror by vengeful Loyalists, abandoned by Primarchs who have achieved apotheosis and transcended to daemonhood (or are on the verge of doing so), the Traitor Legions are pale shadows of their former glory, with many reduced to little more than scattered bands of warriors united by a charismatic or despotic leader, fighting running battles and launching piratical raids for ever-dwindling resources in a desperate bid to survive. The Age of Darkness is over, the War for the Eye is begun.

While many of the Astartes that XVIth Legion hurled across the Katabatic Plains of Himalaysia were 'Newborn', Ekushkya Tactical Squad was almost completely comprised of veterans who had fought for the Warmaster since he before he had been gifted the title at Ullanor. In the wake of the Siege and the flight to the Eye, barely a handful of those veterans still drew breath. By the time of the Legion Wars, Ekushkya was barely even worthy of the title of 'squad', reduced to a trio of embittered warriors operating from the Hunter class Destroyer Cerberos. With little left to draw inspiration from as their Legion shattered about them, Ekushkya refused to surrender their name or colours resolving to forge their own path, or die trying.

 

A veteran of more than two centuries of war even before Horus decried the Emperor as a false god, Kaltus Ghran continues to lead Ekushkya from the front much as he always has; though his humours have run more frequently melancholic of late as his passion for conflict has been tempered by just how much has been lost in the destruction of his Legion.       

Karalte Vei has always been a merciless brawler, preferring the surety of a killstroke delivered to an enemy overwhelmed in close combat than to dispatching the foe at range. However, unlike the frothing madmen of the XIIth or the hedonistic sensation-seekers of the IIIrd, Vei doesn't toy with his prey, nor does he fall into a blind killing rage, rather he carefully applies the precise amount of violence necessary to despatch each for before moving on to the next. 

Ilastyr Noll displayed such an affinity for ranged weaponry that he might easily have ascended to become one of the Legion's Armistos had he the ambition to do so. As it was, Noll was content to remain within Ekushkya as a line trooper supporting his squad with withering volleys of autocannon fire continuing to do so to this day. 

There are rumours that suggest that with Ekushkya depleted as they are and with recruitment of replacement Astartes taking time, skills and resources they simply don't possess they are making increasing use of mortal troops and specialists to aid them in their fight for survival, though whether this is through recognition of the skills and experience such individuals bring to the squad or as is more likely out of sheer neccesity remains unknown.

While Ekushkya Tactical Squad have taken a little longer than anticipated to paint up, it's been a fun  to use some of the fantastic Chaos Space Marine miniatures for a project and to make some subtle conversions and kitbashes to ground them in the setting that's no longer the Age of Darkness and not yet the Dark Millennium.

I chose the models almost completely because of how cool they look rather than anything else; the champion oozing menace with his burnished mask, ritually scarred face and brandished chainaxe, the melee specialist storming forward to engage at close quarters and the fire support operative braced and unleashing withering volleys of suppressing fire with a heavy weapon - all familiar archetypes that immediately helped to inform the characters that the models would represent as well as looking great and being engaging to work on.

Building the models was relatively quick and easy as I'd gone with the 'easy to build' ones from the 'Start Collecting Chaos Space Marines' set so the most challenging aspect was making the changes to Kaltus' and Karalte's backpacks. Don't get me wrong, Anvilus pattern backpacks look great, but I wanted to make the models as individual as I could while a semblance of coherency across the three that suggested they have campaigned together as Ekushkya Tactical Squad for centuries. As a wee aside, I think it's worth mentioning that 'easy to build' miniatures have come such a long way since the push fit Space Marines and Goff Orks of 2nd Edition 40k - a lot of the time now once they're assembled it's difficult to tell that they are 'easy to build' kits. The other changes were some simple swapping of helmets and the replacement of a bolt pistol, ultimately small details but I think they help to place the miniatures into the setting more thoroughly.

Painting took a little longer as I 'felt' my way through creating the colour scheme a little more than usual with this project - some elements I was relatively clear on from the get go, such as the black weapon casings, dark iron and battered leather but others developed as I went, like the maroon loin cloth and the olive green casings on the krak grenades. The bases too provided a new challenge as I'd planned to paint them in a similar style to the ones I've done for the Silver Stars I've painted up, but I ran out of black primer so came up with a completely new recipe to create something that I think looks visually interesting but also complements the miniatures nicely. If you'd like to know how I did them, let me know as I kept notes on the recipe as I was painting them up.

With the Astartes members of Ekushkya Tactical Squad now complete, I'm beginning to think about using one or two of the Traitor Guard from Kill Team: Moroch to create some mortal warriors to accompany them in the near future, but we'll see how that goes!

If you'd like to know more about, or join in with the War for the Eye project, you can join the Discord server and/or search for #WarForTheEye on social media. Until next time, take care and thanks for reading.