"This land was green, until the crystal cracked."

After a recent viewing of the Dark Crystal my addled mind thought of something, a Garthim list for 40K.

Now if you haven’t seen the Dark Crystal, well shame on you. First go watch that. Now you know what the Garthim are. It should be pretty easy to use the Tyranids for a Garthim army. No real shock there.

Well any army that is going to resemble the big shelled minions from the Dark Crystal needs to have a unit that resembles them. I’m looking at Tyranid Warriors. I’ll aim for 1500 like usual and see what happens.

Now a Warrior squad that is five strong seems fairly descent. That is fifteen wounds with mostly Astartes stats. I’ll swap guns for free rending claws, since Garthim have no guns. However, they need some punch, so I’ll add adrenal glands and toxin sacks.They do tend to get all worked up when they are grabbing Podlings and killing Landstriders. The bump to strength and initiative on the charge is always fun. Also having poisoned attacks is a good time. That re-roll to wound vs. stuff is fun. It also gives a small bump to the chance of rending. Rending claws are there since they are a free swap and Garthim have those big pinchy claws. This will cost 200 points for the squad and I think four of these should be sufficient to start.

Now I’ll need an HQ and a Prime should work. They can tag along with the warrior squads and pass along their WS 6 to them. It isn’t much, but every little bit helps. They’ll also get some toxin sacks to help with close combat, and being strength 5 it can only make them better. Actually, I’ll probably throw a bone sword and lash whip on him as well. A strength 5 power weapon and the ability to have your opponent go at initiative 1 are too good to pass up. Heck the upgrades are cheap; I’ll add adrenal glands as well. A strength 6 power weapon on the charge with poison re-rolls/ power weapon can be quite deadly. Heck, I’ll even swap the scything talons for free rending claws. This guy comes in at 115 points and that seems a steal!

Ok then, this leaves me 585 points left. So….I’ll add another HQ Prime with the same upgrades as the previous one.  This still leaves 470 points…….so I’ll buy more Warriors!

Skeksis as Primes?

A squad of six with the upgrades that the other four squads have should do. This squad will run 240 points. It will give me 230 points left. Hmmmmm there are enough points left over for another squad of five with upgrades or a squad of seven with no upgrades. Now this seven “man” squad wouldn’t be as deadly, but it isn’t as scary either. A squad seven strong with a rending claw swap will be a nice screen for the better combat oriented squads. Now this is still not a slouch in close combat unit, but it just isn’t as potentially deadly as the others.

Ok so the force will look like this………..

HQ- Prime-rending claws, bone sword/ whip, adrenal glands, toxin sacs
HQ- Prime- rending claws, bone sword/ whip, adrenal glands, toxin sacs
TROOP-Warrior x5-rending claws, adrenal glands, toxin sacs
TROOP-Warrior x5-rending claws, adrenal glands, toxin sacs
TROOP-Warrior x5-rending claws, adrenal glands, toxin sacs
TROOP-Warrior x5-rending claws, adrenal glands, toxin sacs
TROOP-Warrior x6-rending claws, adrenal glands, toxin sacs
TROOP-Warrior x7-rending claws

Now this does leave me a whopping 20 points left over. I’m not sure what to do with those.

As a force, this could be really fun to run. You are fearless and can put the hurt on squads in close combat. However, you can’t shoot anything and any S 8+ templates will ruin your day. The 4+ armor and cover saves can help a bit as will the three wounds per Warrior. Sure walking is a pain, but just deploy far enough up field to mitigate that a bit. Armor can be a problem since it will just zoom away from you. Although it is still a 40K game and I have never seen on go a full 5+ turns without some close combat. There is also the low model count to deal with as well. Low model counts armies usually seem to struggle vs. a lot of foes.

Modeling is where this could get really cool. The Primes could be skekUng (the Garthim Master) and skekSil (the Chamberlin). Their bone swords could be modeled after the swords used during the Trial by Stone. I’m not sure I could make them look bird-like since I have no sculpting skills, but a few head and arm swaps might work. The clothing could be tough, but tattered robes migh be easier to build than bird heads. Still it would look pretty tight with two Skeksis leading this force.



TRIAL BY STONE!!



Now the Garthim I would really want to use Tyrant Guards for them. The sad part there is that they are single models and that would get really expensive to build this army from them. Still they look more like the Garthim than the regular Warriors. Maybe Hive Guard with arm swaps could work as well, but they wouldn’t be any cheaper. A shame GW didn’t make a squad of three-five plastic Hive/Tyrant Guard models.