(hoping this is in the right forum)

I'm wanting to start a new army, but none of the current 40k armies appeal to me right now. So I turned to fluff, and found the Umbra from the book Xenology. For those who haven't read it, they're a race of black spheres that can control shadows as appendages and are weak to light (i.e the only race lasguns are effective against).

"Woo!", thinks I, but before I go and make 'em, a few questions for you to answer (please):
-Lost and the damned rules. Perfect, cheap mutants with exploding guns (i.e on a roll of 1 one of the Umbra step into light and go bang or overload with energy), though can I still use them?
-Tyranids codex (i.e plan B), Devourers, Spinefists or Fleshborers? (effectivity + fluffiness factors)
-Would you play against an army made almost entirely (240ish models in 1500pts) of polystyrene balls/rolls of greenstuff?
-Do you have any ideas for making them? I'm thinking of polystyrene balls on paperclips, coated with superglue/PVA to strengthen it, black spray then grey drybrush, black ink wash? Or greenstuff balls?
-Tyranid Warriors/Hive Tyrants/Big Mutants - what would you use to represent them? Big eyeballs? Big eyeballs with chaos spawn arms, etc?

Thanks :D

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Ok, they might be a bit too big, as they're 6mm spherical pellets...
:happy:

PERFECT!

Though, is it legal? Doesn't it have to be 90% GW or something like that - or is that only competitor's models that count as the other 10%? And what about greenstuff, as GW sell it? :D

definatly L&TD, even though it's not really legal anymore, the modeling may be interesting ( tons of black spheres only some are really powerfull ). could be a fun oddity;Y

Unfortunatley I don't have anything to contribute to your spheres question, but, it may be worth looking into Warhammer Fantasy if none of the 40k armies appeal to you 8Y

I prefer Fantasy myself.

I'm thinking of polystyrene balls on paperclips, coated with superglue/PVA to strengthen it, black spray then grey drybrush, black ink wash? Or greenstuff balls?


If you're convinced with doing the umbra thing, then this seems like the best way to go at it.

brush

Honestly you might have some trouble getting some people to play against an army of spheres - the scope for getting unit confused is rather large:)

If you look in the Xenology book, you can see a picture of marines fighting some Umbra - I would attempt to attain this. Model ghostly arms/mouths etc coming from the globes (or the area around the globe) to differentiate between units. This would also make the army more varied and more interesting to look at on the table.

I would personally go for Tyranid rules for these guys, but LaTD could work as well.

Hope it helps,
Rich.

Yeah, that picture is awesome. I plan on making HQ + Elites slots to look like that :D