Today, Eliot will be sharing with you his Adeptus Mechanicus Battalion, the Disciples of Rael!

In January of this year, I finally finished painting an army to a standard I am actually happy with – The Disciples of Rael. After partially finishing a number of armies (more on that another time), it shames me to admit that has taken me 3 long years of painting, gaming and collecting piles of grey plastic for me to get to this point. However, I am super happy with the end result and love my grimy robo children to bits.

One of the key drivers for me picking Adeptus Mechanicus as an army was that I was tired of playing as Dark Angels, and wanted something thematic to eventually pair with knight. I also love the 40K lore around enhancing the human form with augments and the questions that that raises about humanity. Picking a colour scheme was tricky, but I ended up settling for a dirty blue with the offset of a martian base – the plan being to give the minis a very sharp look, but to then pile on the grimdark-ness of 40K.

For me, the highlight of this army is Archmogos Tys (Belisaruis Cawl).  The Archmagos rose through the ranks of the Cult to become the Fabricator  General of the Migale System, piling on extra augments as they went. Tys often travels with a retinue of servitors and menials, and one can be seen  carrying the half destroyed relic of Knight Raeluis Supremos. This model is packed full of detail and was an absolute joy to paint.

The first mini I actually finished was my heavily converted Tech Priest Dominus, Adept Grattus. I’m a big fan of conversions and this was one of my favourites to do so far, especially at the concept stage. I took the bottom half of a destroyer and green stuffed on the top half of the classic Domunis model. He turned out better than expected, and I think my boy has a lot of character.

The backbone of the Disciples of Rael are, well, the Disciples! I knew that I was going to have lots of Rangers in this army from the get go, and have ended up with around 25. Not gonna lie, I got reaaaaly tired of painting these dudes (and have more still to build…), but love how they have turned out. Plus there is a cheeky squad of vanguard in there too.

I’ve been a big fan of the Ad Mech models ever since I got back into the hobby 3 years ago, but one of the models that particularly caught my eye was the Onager Dunecrawler – so I have squeezed 2 of them in this army! These guys proved the heavy support much needed for the Disciples when they go on the hunt for their lost Questoris relic knight.

One of the key elements in building an army for me is to make it unique, and that was always going to mean Forgeworld! I love the grimness of the 30K models and was actually toying with a Dark Mechanicum army for a short while (before a visit from the Ordo Hereticus). I picked up some Myrmidon Secutors to use for Tech and Data priests, then converted to my hearts content.

Ah but the Forgeworld purchases didn’t stop there! Nest up were a bunch of Castellax models to use as Kastelans, as I’m personally not a big fan of the plastic Kastelan kit.  So with just a few minor conversions I had myself a small battlegroup of Kastelans with maximum shooty power! I have one more yet to be built, but 4 of these boys with the Wrath of Mars is already scary enough…

And there we have it! I actually have a few more rangers, sicarians, one castellax and a few destroyers to add to this army, but I’m enjoying having these guys painted on the table for the time being. The knighty boys that the Disciples of Rael support (and worship) are currently on the production line – stay tuned!

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