Warhammer 40,000 Project (Back) Log

(This is an old post, but I brought it here while experimenting with formatting this blog. It's included here along with a few others for continuity. I apologize if you've seen these before, if not then take a look.)

January 9^th, 2009

Season: Warhammer 40,000

Army: Alpha Legion (1000)

Unit: Commander Shadax’s Legionnaires

Welcome to my blog!! This record exists to impel my army construction and completion through threat of embarrassment by several means, including through failure to meet deadlines, crappy paintjobs, terrible innuendos and general overall malaise. We begin the year in the Warhammer 40,000 season in my game club, and that means I need a 40k army!!

I’ve been collecting and gaming for several years, but I never seem to get around to painting everything I collect. This has led to several boxed up armies that are half completed or damaged from years of storage. No more!! Starting with this project, the armies will all be completed in much less time than if I just allowed myself to stare at them for another year.

So, a 1000 point army for Warhammer 40,000 is what I need, and with last years release of Codex: Chaos Space Marines it seems a no-brainer to choose them as the first of my languishing armies to receive the treatment! Alas, after reading the codex it became clear that my army would have to change – drastically.

I started this army when the previous codex was released in 2003, around the time of Eye of Terror. I loved the pic of the Alpha Legionnaire in that book, so I collected a themed army that was my version of the Legion. In the earlier draft of the list (2003-2007) I ran these guys as a completely infiltrating team of power armor commandos. No vehicles, nobody who couldn’t infiltrate. I want to point out that the original list was created before the massive boost Infiltrate got in 4^th edition. It became much more powerful then, much to my benefit. Well, enough with that, GW says!! No more infiltrating with basic troops! Or Characters!!

So the army needed a new slate. I dreamed up a new concept, wrote a new list, got rid of several miniatures, and bought a few new ones. Instead of the infiltrating army list I had for four years, now I will possess something a few people might claim is “unfluffy” – an Alpha Legion siege brigade. Yes that’s right. No cultists. Just Vindicator tanks, baby.

These are the five members of Squad Shadax I painted back in 2003, and I will have to apologize for crappy paint jobs and blurry photography…I’m a novice with the camera and it’s an old 3.2 mega pixel. I’m going to learn how to do this right, so any suggestions you could give would be nice – I know I need a new digicam.

I had several models from different squads painted, but I’ve had to add troops and move around special weapons within units to the point I’m just building new units from scratch. These are the painted fellows that made it into this squad. I include this because for the rest of the unit I had to do some color matching – Storm Blue isn’t made anymore. I chose Nauseating Blue as the stand in color, and went to work.

Painting the units breaks down into about five phases: Nauseating Blue basecoat, Goblin Green drybrush, Mithril Silver trim, leather accessories; and tassels, horns, and eyes. After that, I paint the base and apply a lacquer coat (for that finished look, also protects my models for years of abuse and neglect). Some people don’t like the gloss lacquer; I find it to be necessary for peace of mind.

So I’m going to be using a few different materials than back in 2003 – I no longer have the material I made the basing with, so I’m going to approximate on all the new models and hope that it doesn’t look out of place with the rest of the army. No Storm Blue, no basing materials…

This pic is stage 2 and 3, respectively, on two very similar miniatures from this squad. I have to say that I think the Nauseating Blue and increased amount of Goblin Green turned out well, even if you can’t really see the green highlighting too well in my pic. I almost don’t want to proceed to stage 3 on the rest…hmm, maybe should keep that idea around for the Chosen, later on.

Adding the trim changes the look of the model a whole lot. Stage 3 is of course the most time consuming and tedious…and easy to mess up. You guys will probably catch a lot of my mistakes, but time is kind of an issue for me. Still, he looks pretty close to the old ones I painted, and that’s the goal!!

This is the finished unit, after basing and transfers have been applied. It looks great together with the old ones and without really looking at it, it’s hard to pick out which is which. Objective completed.