Marauder Venator - Test and first on the line

Venators... Funny how these guys have been playing with me since 1996 when I first discovered them in the White Dwarves where the confrontation rules had been published. I had just bought this lot of old magazines in a hobby shop and when I came home my mind was blown into atoms.

Venators and confrontation aren't familiar?, Have a read at THAT first then ...

See? What's not to love in a group of professionnal bounty hunters dressed in leather and chasing psykers and mutants.

Well, the only thing not to love about them is actually getting models of them... As explained before (HERE) the kitbashing route is the safer option. Getting my hands on some of the original Marauder set has proven to be quite challenging to say the least...

Marauder Venators (picture taken from Solegends)

From what I understand, those were cast and distributed in the US where they are slightly more common than on my side of earth. As Confrontation never got farther than being published in the White Dwarf magazine, the interest for it must have remained low (pure speculation, please enlighten me if wrong).

Problem is, the game is actually still cool and some people still love it. I'm one of these. After nearly abandonning all hope to ever get my hand son genuine venator models, 3 occasions poped in a month time or so. Two of these were Ebay auctions which saw me fail at getting anything (despite the tremendous help I got from some people of the Oldhammer community, thanks a lot guys, that really means a lot). Th eother occasion though was th emost simple and elegant of ways of getting a OOP model : a trade. This is how I got my hand son 25% of the whole Maruder venator range ! 

Now on to painting (please forgive my poor pics, things should get better at Christmas...) I opted for a totally not creative colourscheme. Well, I mean to say I shamelessly applied all that was described in the ohn Blanche sketches :

As it's almost impossible to find any picture of painted venators online, I decided to go for the most classical look just to test it (thoug I knew I liked the ide of using leather and whites. Why whites? Well, because for some reason venators have that italian vibe to me, their name (venator is latin for hunter), their masks have that venitian vibe (or at least what I link to venitian imagery).

they make me think about these :

Bauta Masks (traditionnal venitian carnival masks)

The black and white contrast is striking and I had to use it somehow. Just to make tings a little more intersting and to avoid making a direct copy, I reversed it in order to show the leather parts as described in the sketches.

I really like the venators to be professionnals, they do have traditions and a whole graphic universe but I realy like to think of them as cold pros rather than hot tempered zealots as they became later on in Necromunda...

Mutie, mutie, mutie, come here.... who's going to get his bounty? mutie mutie mutie !

For the time being, I've prepared myslef for some kitbash and after experiencing many option regarding heads, I may have found what I wanted on Blightwheel miniatures :

With just the right amount of filing and sanding, they can be a great start for a whole team on top of kitbashed bodies ! Exciting times !

Oh Come ON ! you 've got to be kidding me ! Damn I love my job...

For now, venators will be on pause for a little while but as soon as I get the heads, i'll have a go at buildng some to show you.

In the meantime, if any of you (especially amoingst our north american friends) happen to have some Marauder Venators and feel like making them go to a good home (in exchange of models, money, paintig services or a combo of all of these) , well please consider doing a little gesture, the wheel of Kharma is ever spinnning...