Lucky Space 2; Drop troop boogaloo

 +In which I muse about motivation and it's various sources and eventually show off some WIP models+

Spring has sprung in Melbourne and apparently so has my excitement for Warhammer specifically imperial guard.

When re entering the hobby around 2017-2018 following an intermittent hiatus of 10 years (where I did silly things like live overseas and chase girls instead of playing Warhammer), somehow I managed to rapidly collect models for over 5 guard regiments none of which being from the current range of Cadians,

My illustrious Praetorians being the only regiment to have ever actually managed to reach the dizzying heights of "Finished" without being shoved into paint stripper or abandoned to the back of the cupboard for shiny new things and fleeting ideas.

Enter the Elysian Drop Troops.

+Death from above!+

Through an extremely lucky Facebook marketplace purchase I actually managed to snag roughly 50 Elysians for a fair price about 2019,

Unfortunately it looks like they had a pretty tough life before ending up in my hot little hands with strange poses and thick paint meaning they ended up living in Simple Green for about 15 months before I even thought about doing anything with them.

Eventually during the pandemic I made an attempt of repairing and re arming (quite literally in some cases) these handsome devils before being distracted roughly 4000 points worth of Orks and other Xenos with the Elysians unfortunately ending up back in cold storage on the shelf.

+It's not a pile of shame if you have no shame+

I've never really been able to figure out how to go about the army as a project honestly,

Every now and again I'd see an Elysian on Instagram or Reddit and drag out the sprues and bits, slap together some infantry or an officer and proclaim; 

"This is it!  the time I do these!" 

before findingI didn't have some particular part for them, I didn't actually have a scheme I liked, or some other mental block and back to the cupboard they'd retreat until more ideas could be mustered up to try again.

                                            +At least I know where everything is mostly..+

But after 7 years back in the hobby proper a rather unlikely source of inspiration grabbed me early this year;

Typically I find motivation in other people's hobby projects, ideas, paint jobs etc and rarely find Games Workshops media releases particularly inspirational (out of the box models are not for me), but they went and did something I've found strangely motivating at the beginning of 10th edition by removing a unit from the mainstream game.

Specifically the Landspeeder Storm.

+Glorious hover stretch limo+

Ahhh yes the Landspeeder Storm,

A bit of a "Cool, but why?" Model when it first came out in my opinion, cool for sure but as a non space marine player I never really gave it a second glance beyond thinking it could work for necromunda or something similar but none the less at some point I grabbed a few "just in case" boxes via eBay on a whim one day when apparently flush with cash and low on bills (120$ for 3 I feel anyone would have done the same).

Then the legends dataslate came around and Mr Landspeeder Storm was put out to pasture.

With it no longer being a common sight on the tables of Arc40k (the yearly event I tend to work towards) and other tournaments equally not cool enough to allow legends, I wondered if it could make an appearance in another form,

What could our favourite Hover Jeep be used for if not Space Marines.

And then one day I saw this 

  +Why on earth didn't I think of that?+

I should have known the answer was always going to be Imperial Guard;

In one of the Eisenhorn books the Landspeeder is used by civilians, mercenaries and all sorts of human based forces rather than just the poster children of Warhammer 40k, so of course you'd think there's got to be a guard regiment or two with them in some capacity right?

+Yes, idiot+

But which of the many regiments that I own is most likely to utilize a fast moving lightly armoured transport with the ability to fly above the terrain and be deployed from altitude?

Oh right.

Elysians.

+Remember us?+

With in my opinion the greatest Forgeworld guard range ever produced unfortunately no longer available from Games workshop and those rare models that are out there being over 15 years old (seriously the core range came out in 3rd ed),

Getting creative is the name of the game if I wanted to be able to field the army some day,

Especially given the prices of the old resin Tauros' on eBay.

+hahahaha absolutely not.+

the Landspeeder storm can lead a new exciting life as a Tauros' or even Taurox given its size

+Deceptively close+

Specifically in my case the Tauros' Venator

With a few tweaks and obscure pieces from various friends bits boxes I managed to put together three of these handsome devils;

+Anyone else hear Ride of the Valkyries?+

Is it perfect?

No, heck it's not even finished.

It is cool though?

I think so.

And as GW relegates the Storm and the Elysians to the annals of legends it feels like it fits nicely in with the rest of a narrative and rule of cool style army.

With that gust of fresh inspiration finally blowing the lid off a stalled project I needed a place in the universe for them to live,
enter Lucky Space.

But of course,
they'll need someone to lead them into the unknown...

What is Lucky Space?

 "We're not in Kansas anymore"

Welcome to Lucky Space, what I hope will be my and my Co-authors little slice of the grim dark future of the 41st Millennium. 

This will be our inaugural post introducing what our ideas behind lucky space are, and what we hope the open sandbox on the edge of the galaxy we call the Naarmian Sector might become. 

What is lucky space?

The galaxy is a big place and in a setting as rich as Warhammer 40k there is untold tales hidden under stones yet unturned, despite the near 40 years of storytelling, codexes, novels - campaigns, retcons and dossiers. 

At our core, we are both hobbyists with a penchant for tunnel visioning a good army theme, a deep narrative hook and suffering with the minutiae of perceived perfection. Lucky Space in that sense is a place to make home those ideas at the last stop before oblivion, where we can really make things our own.

Lucky Space, The Rim, The Frontier, The Silent Edge, The Endworlds, The Rimworlds, Outlaw Space. There are a lot of names for this concept. 

It is both a fictional setting within the wider 40k setting located on the northwestern galactic rim bordering the Halo Stars, and a place to give life to our hobby ideas, goals and passion. 

The concept of space faring civilisation on the 'frontier' is not new; Star Wars has Wild Space, the Outer Rim and the Unknown Regions. Star Trek has the Frontier. Mass Effect has the Terminus Systems. Firefly has the Rim. The very concept of this region of space has been explored by other hobbyists who have inspired us like Apologist's incredible Endworlds. You get the idea..

I'll let my Co-Author give you his take on Lucky Space below:

Paul:
++

Lucky Space.

The words stir up a lot of vague notions, half remembered old stories and idea of potential fortune in the unknown.

The 40k universe has always been fascinating to me with these grandiose stories, larger than life characters, hideous monsters and the rest of it's over the top grimdark and derpy appeal. It's such a ridiculous place to explore ideas and concepts, it really has always felt like no matter what I wanted to do the 40k universe has had a place for me to tell the story.

In the last few years with so much of  universe that is slowly becoming linked together and explained in books and media, I almost feel like I've been being told this way of looking at 40k is wrong and that I should stick to the hard facts about what has happened and what will happen according to someone else. With so much of the known 40k universe now feeling almost "Solved" with how much of the detail has been explored.

The idea of a region, of it being an unknown source of stores and half truths, mysteries and possibilities is a breath of fresh air into a hobby that although I definitely love, I often found myself disenchanted with; and so we have the idea of Lucky Space, a quick reference in a book by Dan Abnett as a region of space previously lost to warp storms, shrouded in mystery and possibilities. This region that has barely had contact with the greater imperium for hundreds of years? What would have changed? How has anything survived? Who's left?

It's off the edge of the known maps these days, the data is old maps and decaying files in the databanks of imperial record.  It's recorded as the Halo Stars, but the locals and rogue traders know it by a different name.

The edge of the known,

The outer dark,

The lost worlds,

Fool's Frontier,

But most commonly?

Lucky space.

Here there be dragons.

++

And with that, let's zoom in a little closer to the Naarmian Sector, the place giving us a little more structure to the unstructured.

The Naarmian Sector

"Homebrew is where the heart is"

If you have read this far I applaud you and appreciate you. This next section is a little more map heavy, and as an Urban Planner in every day life - I love a map.

This is the Naarmian Sector at current - the start of what will be the core structure of our homebrew sector. This map reflects the state of the sector at the onset of m41 - a good thousand years before the fall of Cadia and the opening of the Cicatrix Maledictum. 

The name 'Naarmian' is a very on the nose reference to Naarm, the Indigenous Australian name from the Woi-Wurrunng/Boonwurrung language group for the region now known as the City of Melbourne - the place where we live. Doxxing aside, the word Naarm means "Place" which we feel is suitable given our intent for the Sector.

 Taking things that step further, you may notice the structure of the sector is very networked. If you guessed a rail network you would be correct and we would get along great. If you didn't, I'm sure we would still get along great. The Naarmian Sector is a loose and modified translation of the Melbourne Metropolitan Rail Network. 

While I didn't included every station, I did fit a fair chunk of what many would call the 'greatest hits' in. Each station reflects a suburb, which in the Naarmian Sector will reflect a system of worlds. Will these systems be influenced by good natured (source needed) stereotyping of Melbourne Suburbs? Maybe. Time will tell as we develop things further. 

And that's Lucky Space and the Naarmian Sector in a nutshell. If you read through all of this you're a champ. In our next instalments we hope to begin introducing you to some PoV characters, the movers and shakers and what factions and which armies we might be making home within.