Themed Army Ideas

Fighting Tiger Black Ops: Dahana   by James Arnold
Dahana steps up, the very first female Marine I’ve ever constructed. I cannot stress enough what challenge this was. My respect for Kenton and his Tigers has increased tenfold since endeavoring to make one of what he has so many. 

Bio in Brief
To be a Space Marine is know the very essence of human perfection. Men and women who are so powerful, so skilled, that they can barely even be considered to be of the same species. All things being relative, there are still those who have excelled even beyond their own incredible standards. So it was with Dahana.

After her indoctrination into the Tigers of Veda, Dahana was assigned to a Scout sniper. Her marksmanship was already on par with several Captains, as well as many veterans of much greater experience. This earned her a healthy dose of respect, which she used to her advantage several times. During her time as a Scout, Dahana met and fought alongside Janhavi at several large battles. At her request, Dahana spent nearly twice as much time as a Scout than any of her peers. She had no fear of open engagement; rather, it was the thrill of the silent hunt that called to her. 

Dahana was promoted to Sergeant and given the chance to build her own sniper team, an opportunity she was more than happy to accept. For years, her ghostly unit of Tigers was an absolutely devastating presence on the battlefield. Dahana had transformed her recruits into absolute masters of the hunt. Few could claim to be their equal. 

When Janhavi was promoted to Veteran Sergeant, she approached Dahana with a unique offer: to be promoted straight past standard infantry service directly into a Veteran unit. Dahana ended up deciding to continue on with her career alongside her old comrade. She proved to be instrumental in forming new tactics for using power armor in infiltration situations. Without her expertise, the Fighting Tiger Black Ops would not be what it is today. 

Bitz and Pieces
A list of the bitz I used to construct Dahana:

• Legs: From the Assault Marine box
• Head: Reaper mini with the head base from a Space Marine.

Conversions
The body is all as-is. I have to say that I enjoy using the “running” legs form the Assault Marine box for standard troops. I wish GW would include a few in the Tactical Squad box for a little variation. 

On to the head! 

Sure, I could have copped out and threw on a full helmet, but that completely ruins the feel of the squad. I searched high and low for a sprue made by any company that contains female heads, but to absolutely no success. It’s funny, having read the other Jungle articles concerning female Space Marines, that I never realized how male-oriented the entire game is until I tried it myself. There were some Eldar Guardian heads that might have worked, and a few Wood Elves, but nothing in the world of plastic really had the look I wanted. I consulted Kenton’s article detailing where to find female faces, when he mentioned fantasy minis. It was from there that I re-discovered Reaper. 

My whole love of painting started with Reaper minis for my D&D games a few years back. It was great to come back to the company after so many years and to see the massive addition to their library of fantastic sculpts. The website even has a powerful search engine that lets you browse by virtually any quality you can think of in a mini, from race, to gender, even the type of armor they are wearing. The page made it wonderfully simple to find the exact models I wanted and to... well, cut their heads off. 

Choppa Choppa
After scouring one of my local game stores, I found three of the five or so picks from the Reaper website. I bought them home and immediately set to the decapitations. I figured I could keep the bodies and use them later for terrain where I needed icky dead bitz. Waste not.

For the cutting I used a pair of handheld medium duty metal snips. Since they’re only pewter, the minis cut quite easily. My initial plan was to cut them up to shoulder height and finesse the rest with an Exacto knife. After about an hour of minimal progress, I decided to change tactics. Back with the snips, I carefully trimmed the models to little more than the head and neck. 

Then things got interesting. 

Maya’s head cut away quite easily and, once pinned, fit perfectly inside the massive power armor chest. On the other hand, Dahana’s head was quite difficult due to the sculpt. The area between the back of her head and the front of her pony tail was solid metal, and this simply would not fit. To compound the problem, her neck did not fit the armor at all, leaving her with little more than a chin to fill the gap.

What I ended up doing was bending the pony tail back to give it a sense of movement. With this free I could cut away the excess metal. I used a geared-up Sergeant head with the face cut away to give her a neck support. The result was awesome. 

To conclude, a very challenging project, but aren’t they always the ones we love the most when they’re done? 
 

Related Pages
Fighting Tiger Black Ops: Introduction
Fighting Tiger Black Ops: Fiction and Articles
 

Posted October 2006. Used with permission.
 

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