Silent Sisters Finished

Sisters of Silence, ready to adjust a few attitudes on Propsero

Our gaming group is (mostly) pretty excited about the 8th edition of Warhammer 40k, but my 30k painting continues after a short diversion last week.  Here is another group of figures completed from GW's "Burning of Prospero" box game - this is the "Sisters of Silence" unit, part of the loyalist force contingent in the box game.  I had already painted the Sister Superior a couple of weeks ago, and I  finished the balance of the unit over the recent long weekend.

The cloaks on the figures are very nice, very ornate - and are a pain in the ass to paint!

In the background of the 30k setting the Sisters of Silence are a specialized order of militant anti-psyker witch-hunters, with an innate physical/genetic trait that impairs the use of psyker powers. Obviously the warp-talented troops of the Thousand Sons would hate that! These figures are pretty important for the Space Wolf player in the "Burning of Prospero" game, as the Sisters hold out hope of resistance while the warlocks of the XV Legion rain all manner of terrifying psyker powers down upon your lone infantry squad...

Another view of the cloaks...lots of variety, each one is unique, and the most elaborate one (with the scrolls) belongs, as you might expect, to the Sister Superior

The Sisters can be armed with swords, bolt guns or flamers. I didn't care for the idea of the swords over the whole unit, so I left it with the Sister Superior.  I opted to model them as a small squad, with the Sister Superior wielding the sword, another sister armed with the flamer, and the balance equipped with bolt guns.  The variety will add some flavour for games of "Prospero" as well as 30k. 

I have already mentioned the scale creep on these figures, but otherwise the sculpting of these miniatures is quite incredible, even if the cloaks make them much harder to paint than they otherwise would/should be, with both the back of the leg armour and the inset of the cloaks being close-to-impossible to paint properly.  The armour is very, very ornate and there are a lot of small details that skilled brush-masters out there can go totally nuts with!

Flamer on the left, and one of the bolt-gun-armed Sisters on the right...ready to purge some witches

For my part, I opted for mostly washes dry-brushing to get the job done, with some targeted highlighting here and there.  I think the figures turned out fine, although one challenge I encountered was the softening of the detail on the plastic due to the paint-on primer. I hate priming so, so much...but it also reminds me of how much I miss proper metal figures. Sigh.

The Sisters of Silence can be used in standard 30k and 40k games as well, fielding large squads mounted in Rhino APCs etc.  These figures don't really interest me as a large force - I see them much more as a specialized sort of group for narrative games of 30k and 40k, so that is likely the only use they will find outside of the occasional games of  "Burning of Propsero".

Armour, cloaks and faith in the Emperor...let those who dabble in the forbidden arts tremble! Or at least prepare to pay a really big fine...

"Burning of Prospero" comes with a total of 47 miniatures, and I have now managed to finish 42 of them so far - not bad! I have saved the most challenging ones to paint for last - the Custodian Guard, the Emperor's own bodyguard troops! A unit of Custodians made the trip to Prospero along with the Space Wolves, and while they were relatively few in number they certainly packed quite the punch. The game comes with five Custodian models, more multi-part plastic figures. The figures are extremely ornate and look to be pretty difficult to paint...hope I will be able to share some painted examples soon...