This column was intended to be strictly about your Space Marine chapters… But we have to go off-road to talk about Peter’s deep jungle Catachans.
The JP – Jungle Patrol, Jaguar Punters, Just Pain, whatever your mind can imagine, stands for nothing, surprisingly. The joke, being, that thanks to a Munitorium snafu, even the regiment itself is unsure why their gear is stamped “JP” – but they defend the name nonetheless.
Six years ago, Peter Dolan was living on the fringes of the jungles in North East Australia when he began sketching ideas for an Imperial Guard force on a crowded jungle planet. No, that isn’t a joke, Peter’s first love is the outdoors. He grew up dividing his time between Manhattan and a log cabin on Greenwood Lake outside of a State Park.
Close encounter with a Deathworld creature in Queensland, Australia (Golden Orb-Weaver, Nephila genus)
The city didn’t suit him the way that the wilderness did, and so he pursued Field Zoology in College, and has traveled all over the world since then. He’s settled, now, in that same cabin. It’s there that the JP reside, in a tiny cabin in the woods, where they belong.
He keeps his modelling supplies in an old wooden tool chest that belonged to his Grandfather – his hobby space spilling out of the few drawers he has designated for it, whenever he feels the urge to paint or churn out a pile of new terrain.
For a child that grew up playing LEGO with his brother, 40k has been an extension of their shared interest in building, and they grew up in 40k together. They play now, once a month or so, on Peter’s jungle terrain table, or his brother’s City landscaped table in New York City. Although they sound like polar opposites, they still share the bond of the hobby, and keep a running tally of all of their games (as they always have) – with his younger brother well in the lead with Wins. It doesn’t matter, however, they began playing wargames as children, designing their own in Middle and High School. 40k came into their lives after they were already teenagers, but it has remained a part of it for over a decade.
Choice excerpts from Peter and his brother’s ongoing journal:
“Leman Russ Demolisher fires on enemy command squad, scattering to kill friendly Platoon Commander carrying the Relic.”
“Vendetta jinks missile launcher shots and then destroys Predator with snap shots. Next turn gets destroyed by Chapter Master with Thunderhammer.”
“Jokaero miss everything for the entire game until Trygon assaults them: two multi-melta overwatch shots kill it.”
That cabin in the woods holds almost 6,000 points of Catachans, 7,000 of Tyranids, another 4,000 of Eldar and a mish-mash of scratch built counts-as allies for all of the above. Peter doesn’t have any “traditional” armies, everything he builds is his own – custom.
Unlike how you might imagine most tabletop hobbyists, Peter spends most of his time in the outdoors. He prefers backpacking and kayaking to television, and he’s more likely to be working on trail-construction or taking groups of tourists rock climbing than he is to be huddled over a keyboard, informing the neckbearded hambeasts of some forum about how they’re wrong about the pronunciation of Lugft (Apologies to any unwashed-neckbearded-hambeast readers, but you know who you are, and that name is unpronouncable).
Day at the Catachan office, building hiking trails (Bear Mountain State Park, NY).
But we’re here to talk about the JP. My interest in the army, as many of you might agree, was with “Rexy.” The would-be Sentinel Tyrannosaurus, straddled by a heroic looking Catachan with a missile launcher.
An image saved from Peter’s original project log, “Beer, Guns and Dinosaurs, a Catachan Log.”
Sadly, the pictures you may remember from his old Warseer and Dakka project logs are lost forever to the folds of the internet, as his image host has long since expired. I can still see, in my mind’s eye, the plastic dinosaur prior to paint – having it’s jaw beefed up with green stuff. Those pictures and that log are notorious now. If you look hard enough, you’ll even find imitators who have tried to recapture Peter’s concept for themselves.
A model done by Dakka user “Wonkobaggins” – he gave credit to Peter for inspiration.
“I love seeing people run with the theme. It’s fun to know the regiment is duking it out elsewhere throughout the galaxy, and I’m always more than happy to have people share pictures and stories from their own spin-offs.
“Knowing that my minis caused a creative whirlwind in someone’s mind, resulting in hours of focused work and a product they’re proud enough to share online, is a great feeling. Plus, their take on my idea might inspire me again in turn. I think that’s what a hobby community should be all about – enthusiastic people sharing ideas and mutually spurring each other on to new creative feats.”
When I try and describe the army to others, I find it difficult to explain exactly what he has built… It’s Catachans, but with Dinosaurs, like Jurassic Park and Predator meets 40k.
Peter’s first love was Tyranids, believe it or not. His Tyranid conversions are beyond compare, and represent some of the most disgusting and horrifying creatures you might ever see on the tabletop.
“I grew up wanting to be a paleontologist, and wound up studying entomology in college, so being a big fan of the dino-bugs should surprise nobody.
“I always saw Cadians and IG in general as usually being boring, box-standard armies. I wanted to tackle an IG army with a strong theme and lots of character and humor, while still fitting into the universe.”
Peter sketched, there on the edge of the jungle in Australia, between SCUBA dives, snake-catching and peeling leeches from his skin, and suddenly Catachan made sense. After a few years teaching primitive survival skills in the woods, he was essentially living with the real life equivalent to the deep jungle Catachans of the 40k universe… Y’know, sans giant alien invaders and the dark force of Chaos lurking in the shadows.
He started with the units that seemed the most fun to convert.
“I don’t give much of a fig for ‘unit effectiveness.'”
No figs were given, and he began with the Cold One Rough Riders, the Sexual Tyrannosaurus Scout Sentinel, a Squat Enginseer and camoflaged Storm Troopers.
“There’s probably not more than five or so unconverted models in the entire army, tops. Pretty much every infantry model has, at the very least, a head or weapon or something from another kit.”
It’s not difficult to see how much effort went into the worldbuilding of the theme and setting. From the jungle leaf bases to the bandanas and cigars, the entire army is oozing with 80’s action film staples. His favorite among them is Colonel “Iron Gut” Jameson.
Aside from the Whiskey-titled Colonel, the rest of the characters in the army are mostly named after beers. Sergeants Killian, Stone, Beck, Kilkenny and all the rest. This is a level of care and investment that I wish more 40k players had with their armies. Maybe you consider it a little “space-barbies” to name your units, but I find it genuinely fascinating.
The benefit of our hobby is the customization and detail we can put into the models, as well as their stories. Even the vehicles are aptly named, here: “Arrogant bastard” – the Leman Russ Battle Tank, “Storm King,” an Annihilator, and my favorite, the Imperial Knight ally, “Carno Taurus” (loosely translated to “Meat Bull” or “don’t you wish you were this clever.”)
The fluff and backstory and work that has gone into the JP is so expansive, that I’m going to dedicate a second column specifically to the mountain of work Peter has put into it. There’s so much to cover, from his allies to “counts-as” models, Peter was forced to turn the massive stacks of PDF rules he’d compiled into a single 50+ page supplement with rules, fluff and photographs of all of his converted units.
All of Peter’s armies fit into the jungle theme, and he’s effortlessly corralled their story into an incredible piece of work that deserves to be admired on its own.
“For me, 40k is a painting and sculpting activity that, every now and then, I can hang out with my brother and roll dice and laugh over. …My job involves working with other people constantly, so 40k is my ‘relax and decompress alone’ time.”
As you’ve figured out by now, sadly this incredible army doesn’t make it to many local game stores, as Peter and his younger brother primarily play each other. They’ve come to really enjoy 7th Edition, and he considers it his favorite edition thus far, despite it coming so shortly after 6th.
“I love the allies flexibility, since I’m all about modeling counts-as units. I will say, though, that I really dislike this age of ‘wacky random’ rules where you need cards to keep track of everything. I preferred buying my psychic powers before the battle, and not having to worry about rolling useless Warlord traits. That sort of thing should be reserved for Orks and Chaos.”
He’s also bitter about random charge distances – understandably. Overall, he really defends 7th edition, aside from the inundation of supplements and dataslates that he says are an “absolute horror” to keep track of.
Despite his defense of 7th, Peter says Games Workshop has effectively priced him out when it comes to buying miniatures. He loves their products and goes on about how the style of the setting and miniatures initially drew he and his brother into the hobby, but he shops almost exclusively on eBay
“The 40k setting is already so much satire and hyperbole that I think the models fit right in. A guy in a tank top, riding a dinosaur, is far less outlandish than something like Thunderwolf Cavalry (genetically-engineered superhuman werewolves in power armor riding on giant wolves with robot-bits).”
As a strong proponent of injecting creativity and diversity into his conversions, Peter offers some great advice for hobbyists who want to create something new and original in the 40k universe.
“It doesn’t have to be hard! Especially with new plastic Fantasy kits, it’s incredibly easy to pick a line of details you like and get a pack of bits off ebay. ‘Aztec’ Space Marines with Lizardmen weapons, Dwarfs with Imperial Guard or Space Marine arms as Squats, monsters mounted with weapons as vehicles in a Chaos horde with zombies playing as summoned daemons…
“Some of the best conversions are a few swapped bits and a color scheme that’s a subtle variation off of what’s familiar. You don’t need to be a greenstuff expert or have a massive bits box to make a distinctive army.
“At the very least, experiment with diverse skin tones! Growing up attending public schools in New York City, it was always a slap in the face to see the Imperial Guard depicted as the most enormous, diverse, galaxy-spanning fighting force (of near-identical white males) recruited from every planet and all walks of life.”
I’m going to leave you with Peter’s own words, as they struck me as quite profound. Often times in this hobby, we’re knee-deep in armies that parrot one another, and yet his stand out from the rest, completely original – and that’s worth celebrating. I think we could all benefit from taking a page from Peter’s book.
“The important thing for me is that people are creative – I’ll take a decently painted but original Space Marine Chapter over Golden Daemon Ultramarines any day of the week. With your army, you have an infinitely blank canvas to exercise your creativity to make something never seen before. In my humble hobby opinion, every paint-by-numbers copy of a Codex color scheme is a wasted opportunity.
“It’s especially painful when a fantastic painter tackles something like Cadians or Blood Angels and mimics the box art. At the very least, add a stripe of new armor color, a distinctive regiment logo, a splash of verdigris on the metal, exotic basing… something to make them even slightly your own!”
Chapter Profile: Beer, Guns & Dinosaurs: Catachan JP Regiment originally appeared on The Flying Monkeys on March 19th, 2015.
