Gauntlet-
Banded Mongoose
I like the idea of alien crab people- and I've done some stats and models before for a crab race called the Cadeyr... they were a sad little people forced to become nomads by the Arachnids... Their Homeworld of Tarken was once an ocean and had become a deserts eons ago.
Anywho here is an image:
Now I want to start work on a new version which will sadly: ignore these models lol.
Not sure about the name but perhaps something like the 'KarKoen'
So as I said, I like crabs, a neat feature about them is how their growth is very very linear... some crabs will just keep getting bigger and bigger! And the disparity in limbs is cool, IE one arm will often be massive, the other will not... this is interesting for its lack of symmetry.
Another interesting concept I've always thought of is biological 'radio', but lets just say they can be psychics... Imagine if your hand was a seperate life form and could move by your command in the room next door? Basically via remote- this new race will have this concept, but a hand can't see or hear? so What good would it be?
Thats why the Karkoen use their children for it lol. Basically a Karkoen young-ling is a complete slave to the powerful mind of the parent, who sees what its children see. This allows it to use its children intelligently as they have no real intelligence from birth. As time goes by and the child grows it will begin to emanate its own psychic signal, and become independent. Some Karkoen will purposely underfeed some of their offspring to ensure that they do not become independent.
Intelligence/Psych powers is co-relational with age/size.
The Karkoen determine leadership by psychic dominance battles, whereby they try to control each others actions or offspring, whoever is the strongest in these will/mind battles (which often include physical combat simultaneously) is the unquestioned leader until he is challenged and beaten.
This is an odd mixture of totalitarianism with popularism motivation, the Karkoen concept of freedom is that he is free to obtain as much power as possible by his own merit. The result of this is a very ambitious society that has much inner conflict and intrigue in terms of heirarchy and command, but a complete lack of organized internal conflict.
Basically Karkoen are so individually obsessed with gaining personal power it never occurred to any of them to agree long enough to form a political party or start a civil war... you simply can't get them to think in those terms most of the time.
In addition Karkoen breed asexually, which is efficient, and expediant but has very little diversification which can be a big problem. The Karkoen naturally and intuitively use their psychic control over their own bodies to mentally reorganize the DNA encoding of offspring. They do not create 'very different' children, but they are not strict clones.
As a result Karkoen are not imaginative people, and on top of this their minds are so preoccupied with psychic information and senses that their physical reflexes and senses suffer a bit.
Basically they have a powerful brain, but its usually stretched thin over 6 bodies or so, the main body and then the subordinate 'children'.
Also in contrast to my Cadeyr design, I'm thinking the Karkoen are from an icy planet with rocky mountains breaching from the sea.
Okay- so stats for these people?
1. The above reason justifies 2 things, that A. Karkoen adult models can have subordinate Karkoen children models. Think Tau Drones, or Dacon Hounds, its the same deal for Karkoen. Also these children are not really 'sentenient' by Karkoen standards - they have no qualms about sacrificing their lives if need be.
mmmm moral greyness
The second thing, is that because the Karkoen are big creatures and they have their minds 'stretched' thin and paying attention to other minds, they are not the fastest on their feet... All adult Karkoen are lumbering! Meaning in terms of reaction you need only worry about their children which are much easier to pick off!
2. The Karkoen are a big sturdy four legged crab man thing. Its going to be really tough to take them down, and they will be roughly MI Ape Suit sized. An army of Karkoen is probably 10-20 Models. Notably because they are crabs, the Karkoen limbs are often differently sized, and Karkoen have one large 'shield arm' as standard... think the shields that Hunters use in Halo.
The result for this idea will be that the Karkoen have stronger front Target/Kill scores than they do on the side or the rear! In addition they can hunker down further and gain a higher target/kill by placing the shield armor directly in front, but this will cost you mobility!
This will encourage flanking from the enemy and Phalanx maneuvers on the Karkoen... for example-
If the Karkoen Target on the side and rear is 6, and say kill 9 (4 wounds probably) then the front would be 7/10. More importantly with the shield down (ready requirement? Reduce move to 3 inches?) this becomes 8/10 and +1 to armor save?
This means that the bulk of infantry forces need to get 'around' the Karkoen to harm it... the good news is that it is lumbering and very slow which will give you the chance to do so.
3. The Karkoen are big and as a result they think 'big' they don't have many weapons that are designed to hurt 'little' things such as most alien infantry... even warrior bugs seem a waste of fire power sometimes! So this will further help armies to 'swarm' these big nasty crabs! The Karkoen will have to rely on their offspring slaves to defend them from such diminutive threats!
They will be able to melee very big things to death... but be under-equipped to meleeing lots of smaller targets... I'm thinking something like 2D10+??? at ??? and the option of doing D10+D10 as a single strike.... Really badass- not efficient though!
4. Powers: Generally speaking, the psychic powers will be defensive... they have psychic control over their own biology so I'm thinking they will be able to focus their body energy into healing...
a special action that gains the unit a hit point. This means that you will want to overwhelm the Karkoen 'individually' putting one hit on each Karkoen will just lose them some actions and won't kill them! But three hits on one Karkoen is definitive progress! (I would stipulate that you can only perform the regen ability once per round)
In addition to this, they would be able to expand command ranges, enrage subordinate into battle frenzies (the price being hitpoints!) and be able to try and detect ambushing units. And perhaps try to dominate enemy leaders into submission, losing the enemy some actions.
5. Karkoen technology lags a bit, they are not very imaginative and they are not terribly great at collaboration for long long periods of time... so their research has suffered. That being said they are advanced, they've been around a long time! No Combat Aircraft... and poor AA. They've got tech but they haven't necessarily thought it all through yet... their world is devoid of flying creatures, and while they have reached space... they never really thought about the in-between atmosphere as something that could be 'used'.
Their weapons will probablly be a mixture of rocketry and lasers, things meant to really superbly penetrate armor, as that is what these guys like to do... oh and land mines, and psychic attack 'transmitters'... I can imagine the Karkoen throwing a 'Psy-Enhancement' grenade that allows them to temporarily take control of some enemy warrior bugs!
6. I love the idea of using different dice for damage, its a brilliant to use both a D10 and D6, but this is a custom race so I like to be special... these guys will use weapons with D8s! In addition I'm thinking that their armor saves may also use D8s!
7. How do you kill these bastards? The MI can jump to the side and use their auto weapons, the Karkoen will shrug off allot with a high armor save, but they will eventually crack, and you can of course use high artillary, missiles, and nukes lol!
The Skinnies have mass drivers all over the place, the Karkoen will not have a good day against them!
The Arachnids will have the hardest time I believe but the tried and true method of 'get enough warriors around it' should work.
Thats the design hope- these guys won't dominate the game or any some such, but they will definitely be a challenge because they are very strong but lack the finesse to carry the day.
So the basic Karkoen stat line (Lots of maybes here)
Squad Size: 3
Move: 5 (reduced to 3 if Shield is Down)
Size: 4
CC: 2D10, or D10+D10
(Arm variation breeds will allow you to replace this with 3D8 Piercing 1)
Target: 6+ FXF: 7 Shield Down: FXF: 8
Kill: 8+ FXF: 9 Shield Down: FXF: 10
Armor: 3+ (on a D8 = 75%)
Hits: 4
Offspring: D6? or 3 or 5? Up to 10?
-One hit does not cripple the unit-
Weapons:
Neutrino Slicer: 2D8, 30" Piercing 1, Infinite
De-Molecular Rocket Launcher: D10, Kill Shot, Multi-hit, Pack
Psychic Quake: Detonating all Offspring forces all enemies of size 2 or lesser within 6 inches of an offspring to make a dodge save or be forced to flinch away from the emitter center point a total of 8 inches. This cause 1 Hit to the user as well!
So the squad always has Neutrino Slicers, but the leader can purchase the De-Molecular Rocket for ??? Points.
The Psychic Quake can be purchased for 25 Points for any of them.
Notably if the leader dies in the squad, a new model becomes the leader after one lost action, but loses a single HP, this represents the Karkoen 'in-fighting' for command! (Killing Leaders becomes successively easier lol)
Average Cost: I dunno let aim for 250ish?
The Offspring stats? No Idea yet...
Anywho here is an image:
Now I want to start work on a new version which will sadly: ignore these models lol.
Not sure about the name but perhaps something like the 'KarKoen'
So as I said, I like crabs, a neat feature about them is how their growth is very very linear... some crabs will just keep getting bigger and bigger! And the disparity in limbs is cool, IE one arm will often be massive, the other will not... this is interesting for its lack of symmetry.
Another interesting concept I've always thought of is biological 'radio', but lets just say they can be psychics... Imagine if your hand was a seperate life form and could move by your command in the room next door? Basically via remote- this new race will have this concept, but a hand can't see or hear? so What good would it be?
Thats why the Karkoen use their children for it lol. Basically a Karkoen young-ling is a complete slave to the powerful mind of the parent, who sees what its children see. This allows it to use its children intelligently as they have no real intelligence from birth. As time goes by and the child grows it will begin to emanate its own psychic signal, and become independent. Some Karkoen will purposely underfeed some of their offspring to ensure that they do not become independent.
Intelligence/Psych powers is co-relational with age/size.
The Karkoen determine leadership by psychic dominance battles, whereby they try to control each others actions or offspring, whoever is the strongest in these will/mind battles (which often include physical combat simultaneously) is the unquestioned leader until he is challenged and beaten.
This is an odd mixture of totalitarianism with popularism motivation, the Karkoen concept of freedom is that he is free to obtain as much power as possible by his own merit. The result of this is a very ambitious society that has much inner conflict and intrigue in terms of heirarchy and command, but a complete lack of organized internal conflict.
Basically Karkoen are so individually obsessed with gaining personal power it never occurred to any of them to agree long enough to form a political party or start a civil war... you simply can't get them to think in those terms most of the time.
In addition Karkoen breed asexually, which is efficient, and expediant but has very little diversification which can be a big problem. The Karkoen naturally and intuitively use their psychic control over their own bodies to mentally reorganize the DNA encoding of offspring. They do not create 'very different' children, but they are not strict clones.
As a result Karkoen are not imaginative people, and on top of this their minds are so preoccupied with psychic information and senses that their physical reflexes and senses suffer a bit.
Basically they have a powerful brain, but its usually stretched thin over 6 bodies or so, the main body and then the subordinate 'children'.
Also in contrast to my Cadeyr design, I'm thinking the Karkoen are from an icy planet with rocky mountains breaching from the sea.
Okay- so stats for these people?
1. The above reason justifies 2 things, that A. Karkoen adult models can have subordinate Karkoen children models. Think Tau Drones, or Dacon Hounds, its the same deal for Karkoen. Also these children are not really 'sentenient' by Karkoen standards - they have no qualms about sacrificing their lives if need be.
mmmm moral greyness
The second thing, is that because the Karkoen are big creatures and they have their minds 'stretched' thin and paying attention to other minds, they are not the fastest on their feet... All adult Karkoen are lumbering! Meaning in terms of reaction you need only worry about their children which are much easier to pick off!
2. The Karkoen are a big sturdy four legged crab man thing. Its going to be really tough to take them down, and they will be roughly MI Ape Suit sized. An army of Karkoen is probably 10-20 Models. Notably because they are crabs, the Karkoen limbs are often differently sized, and Karkoen have one large 'shield arm' as standard... think the shields that Hunters use in Halo.
The result for this idea will be that the Karkoen have stronger front Target/Kill scores than they do on the side or the rear! In addition they can hunker down further and gain a higher target/kill by placing the shield armor directly in front, but this will cost you mobility!
This will encourage flanking from the enemy and Phalanx maneuvers on the Karkoen... for example-
If the Karkoen Target on the side and rear is 6, and say kill 9 (4 wounds probably) then the front would be 7/10. More importantly with the shield down (ready requirement? Reduce move to 3 inches?) this becomes 8/10 and +1 to armor save?
This means that the bulk of infantry forces need to get 'around' the Karkoen to harm it... the good news is that it is lumbering and very slow which will give you the chance to do so.
3. The Karkoen are big and as a result they think 'big' they don't have many weapons that are designed to hurt 'little' things such as most alien infantry... even warrior bugs seem a waste of fire power sometimes! So this will further help armies to 'swarm' these big nasty crabs! The Karkoen will have to rely on their offspring slaves to defend them from such diminutive threats!
They will be able to melee very big things to death... but be under-equipped to meleeing lots of smaller targets... I'm thinking something like 2D10+??? at ??? and the option of doing D10+D10 as a single strike.... Really badass- not efficient though!
4. Powers: Generally speaking, the psychic powers will be defensive... they have psychic control over their own biology so I'm thinking they will be able to focus their body energy into healing...
a special action that gains the unit a hit point. This means that you will want to overwhelm the Karkoen 'individually' putting one hit on each Karkoen will just lose them some actions and won't kill them! But three hits on one Karkoen is definitive progress! (I would stipulate that you can only perform the regen ability once per round)
In addition to this, they would be able to expand command ranges, enrage subordinate into battle frenzies (the price being hitpoints!) and be able to try and detect ambushing units. And perhaps try to dominate enemy leaders into submission, losing the enemy some actions.
5. Karkoen technology lags a bit, they are not very imaginative and they are not terribly great at collaboration for long long periods of time... so their research has suffered. That being said they are advanced, they've been around a long time! No Combat Aircraft... and poor AA. They've got tech but they haven't necessarily thought it all through yet... their world is devoid of flying creatures, and while they have reached space... they never really thought about the in-between atmosphere as something that could be 'used'.
Their weapons will probablly be a mixture of rocketry and lasers, things meant to really superbly penetrate armor, as that is what these guys like to do... oh and land mines, and psychic attack 'transmitters'... I can imagine the Karkoen throwing a 'Psy-Enhancement' grenade that allows them to temporarily take control of some enemy warrior bugs!
6. I love the idea of using different dice for damage, its a brilliant to use both a D10 and D6, but this is a custom race so I like to be special... these guys will use weapons with D8s! In addition I'm thinking that their armor saves may also use D8s!
7. How do you kill these bastards? The MI can jump to the side and use their auto weapons, the Karkoen will shrug off allot with a high armor save, but they will eventually crack, and you can of course use high artillary, missiles, and nukes lol!
The Skinnies have mass drivers all over the place, the Karkoen will not have a good day against them!
The Arachnids will have the hardest time I believe but the tried and true method of 'get enough warriors around it' should work.
Thats the design hope- these guys won't dominate the game or any some such, but they will definitely be a challenge because they are very strong but lack the finesse to carry the day.
So the basic Karkoen stat line (Lots of maybes here)
Squad Size: 3
Move: 5 (reduced to 3 if Shield is Down)
Size: 4
CC: 2D10, or D10+D10
(Arm variation breeds will allow you to replace this with 3D8 Piercing 1)
Target: 6+ FXF: 7 Shield Down: FXF: 8
Kill: 8+ FXF: 9 Shield Down: FXF: 10
Armor: 3+ (on a D8 = 75%)
Hits: 4
Offspring: D6? or 3 or 5? Up to 10?
-One hit does not cripple the unit-
Weapons:
Neutrino Slicer: 2D8, 30" Piercing 1, Infinite
De-Molecular Rocket Launcher: D10, Kill Shot, Multi-hit, Pack
Psychic Quake: Detonating all Offspring forces all enemies of size 2 or lesser within 6 inches of an offspring to make a dodge save or be forced to flinch away from the emitter center point a total of 8 inches. This cause 1 Hit to the user as well!
So the squad always has Neutrino Slicers, but the leader can purchase the De-Molecular Rocket for ??? Points.
The Psychic Quake can be purchased for 25 Points for any of them.
Notably if the leader dies in the squad, a new model becomes the leader after one lost action, but loses a single HP, this represents the Karkoen 'in-fighting' for command! (Killing Leaders becomes successively easier lol)
Average Cost: I dunno let aim for 250ish?
The Offspring stats? No Idea yet...
