Well, 2025 is now in the rear-view mirror, and as expected my hobby time has been rather limited with a newborn and moving house. I’ve finally managed to get the hobby desk set up temporarily for the time being and am eager to get cracking with some painting, but the big question is: on what?

As is pretty much standard for me, the Ultramarines project I started last year has fizzled out. I just can’t seem to find the motivation to carry on with it. Something that has become more and more apparent to me over the last year is that I really don’t like the direction Warhammer has gone, whether that’s 40K or Horus Heresy. Between the move away from the original Space Marine aesthetic and the increasingly competitive focus of the game, it’s really not something I’m enjoying.

One positive of the move was that I had to sort out all my hobby stuff. As editions move on, you tend to forget about all the books and bits you pick up that get cast aside as the edition churn continues. It’s probably pure nostalgia, but some of my best memories were of playing 5th edition, so I dug out the rulebook to have a read. This led me down a bit of a rabbit hole, where I came across the ProHammer ruleset. It looks interesting, as it apparently allows you to use any codex from 3rd to 7th edition against each other, which sounds awesome. I haven’t had a chance to play it yet, but I’m hoping to get a couple of test games in to see how it plays.

This rabbit hole then led me further to the 35K project, a fan project exploring the events of the Nova Terra Interregnum. After reading through their website and joining their Discord, it really made me want to do something set in this era of 40K. I started looking at creating my own Marine chapter, but then, as usual, my thoughts led me back to the Iron Snakes. Outside of the books set in M41, there isn’t a great deal of lore for them, other than the fact they are a Second Founding chapter of the Ultramarines. That got the creative juices flowing, and using the 4th Edition Space Marine codex (as recommended by the 35K project), I’ve drawn up a list and am currently working on a test model for the scheme.

As I have a ton of Horus Heresy models left over, this feels like the perfect chance to use them, as well as an opportunity to create some lore for the Iron Snakes.

So, to add to this project, I dug out a couple of old classics to read this weekend.

Hopefully next post I’ll have some actually painted models to show off. Until next time.