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Theoretical While building an army, one might find themselves having crossed a line, where the project begins materializing beyond the Kill-Team or individual squad level. Like models in their squads, the units begin to coalesce into a recognizable force. It's not something I can really visualize with grey plastic - the painting lends itself to the phenomenon. The small slips and errors made on specific models goes away, and the trees become the forest. Practical With my Tactical Squads and Devastator Squad complete, things are starting to come together for the Cardinal Guard's 5th Company. 1,000pts of 4th Edition Space Marines doesn't stretch very far; with 15 models complete, that leaves 6 more in power armor, a Dreadnought, and a Razorback. My opponent has been working away in the background on his Salamanders, and needs to tackle 7 Terminators (Commander, Librarian, and Command Squad) and 2 Dreadnoughts. Hobby Progress Looking at this quick snap of a Tactical Squad, he's leaning into 3rd Company's lore - these sons of Vulkan look like they've been through Hell. I'm excited to see what he does with the Terminators and Dreadnoughts. Devastator Squad Donetal (and the rest of my army) look downright inspection-ready compared to the battered Salamanders. At this point in time, with every model assembled, we could play some games. I'm juggling self-control and curiosity, playing with only painted models versus learning the rules and our army lists. Finding openings in our schedules and speed of painting will be the decisive factor.

Theoretical It's largely unnecessary (and generously self-indulgent) to explain the concept of Compulsory Unit Selections to the B&C crowd. With his previous experiences in 3rd Edition Age of Sigmar (playing the big orks whose name escapes me - 'Ardboyz? Irongutz?), my opponent grasped the concept pretty quickly. Personally, I first learned Compulsories during my initial forays in Warhammer, playing Horus Heresy from 2015 until the first rendition's untimely demise (there's another conversation to be had elsewhere about the HH2.0 update and the loss of "the magic" that made that system appealing). We both enjoy playing around inside of tight boxes of rules, and I find that limitations and regulation breeds creativity, to a certain point. At no point, however, have the 40k rules writers ever needed to convince Space Marine fans to take Tactical Squads - they're the in-universe and tabletop backbone of a Codex-Compliant Company (or Demi-Company), and a great hobby exercise - an opportunity to showcase the distilled essence and character of a Chapter. The colors, heraldry, and any weird quirks can be presented and not overwritten by duty-specific wargear or markings. Practical I committed to make the two identical Tactical Squads of my 1,000pt list the first units I completed in the project. Tactical Squads Andreus and Mattean are 5th Company's 1st and 2nd Squads, and in 5-man form, both armed with a Plasma Gun. The Sergeants are armed with Power Swords (denoting induction into the Velocitari), wear laurel wreaths (denoting secular rank and the stewardship of a particular shrine on the Company's Charge-World), and each wear a copy of the Lectio Divinitatus on their hip. Their tilt-shelds display the 5th Company's battle-heraldry, a simple-to-freehand red stripe on a grey field. I tried to add some sort of gubbin or bit to each Marine - a purity seal there, ammo and grenade pouches here, etc - just to add some interest to the units. Painting itself was a pretty straightforward tried-and-true method. For the undercoat, a tricolor zenithal + purple wash + drybrush, to create shadows, add depth to recesses, and strengthen highlighted areas without any sort of cerebral labor. After that, I added colors (sometimes all at once, sometimes progressively layering) with speed paint. The lack of any sort of finesse will show to the trained eye at 2" away, but I'm at a stage in the hobby where I really don't mind okay-painted minis, so long as I get to roll dice and make pew-pew noises.

Hey all! Welcome to my shiny new thread. Some of you will know me from my 30k Iron Warriors and Dornian Heresy White Scars threads that I’ve had up here over the years, among other things. In the last year I’ve moved across the country and, unfortunately, there wasn’t a lot of room to bring those projects with me! A crying shame, I know. However, that has left me with a clean slate to start a new force! No more half-finished projects staring at me, begging to be completed. At least not for a while. So, I’ve decided to go ahead with an army I’ve wanted to put together for years - the better part of a decade, actually. Black Legion! Some of you may faintly recall my Fifteen Fangs warband, which I built way back in 2018, when Kill Team first came out. That was my first foray into CSM, but, after finishing the conversions, the project never went anywhere. Until now! When visiting home a couple months back the models caught my eye and I got inspired to take them and expand them into a full Black Legion force. But more on that later. Today my offering is the one and only, the unmistakeable, Warmaster of Chaos: Abaddon, the Despoiler. Abaddon has been my favourite character in the setting for a long while now - ever since I first got my teenage mitts on ADB’s Talon of Horus, an experience I’m sure a lot of you can agree with. Needless to say - other characters from the book will be cropping up here and there in this thread. Over the last few weeks I’ve chipped away at the big guy, and finally finished him up today! He was an absolute blast to paint, and a really excellent model all around. A few notes about creative decisions: • I decided I wanted that infamous red underglow, and it was the first part of the model I’d say was in anyway completed. Looking at it reminded me of the iconic Horus V the Emperor painting, so I decided to paint that fallen marine on the base as a Blood Angels Sanguinary Guard - with an mind towards making the broken wing statue on the base appear as though it was the wing from said Sanguinary Guard’s jump-pack. I wanted Abaddon, clad in black and gold terminator armour, wielding his father’s talon, and stood over a winged, golden-armoured warrior to look the spitting image of his own father - a sort of meta life-imitates-art take, with an ironic twist in that Abaddon probably would hate to know how similar he appears to Horus in this moment I have captured him in. • Left the cape off - I wanted that classic Abaddon silhouette that alluded to his old mini. Cool as the cape looks, it doesn’t feel like Abaddon to me. Plus it obscures some cool details to be found on the back! • Trophy rack - I had so much fun painting up some of my friend’s armies as trophies mounted on Abaddon’s spike rack. We have an Ultramarines lieutenant as played by my friend James, and my friend Raj’s green-and-black Tyranids. I’ve purposefully left the left-most skull (which has Space Marine Bionics attached to it) partially unpainted, so I can add another space marine faction if desired. Coming up - I’ve got plans for a terminator retinue for Abaddon, with a member representing each of the chaos gods. I also have a squad of possessed, and the aforementioned Fifteen fangs kill team, which I will re-photograph to be added to this thread later on. And that’s all for today folks! Cheers for reading, stick around if you wanna see more! If you want more frequent updates, my Instagram, @jallens40k, gets WIP photos as often as I work on my minis. Laters!

I think of this guy as "The Grey Hunter", out on a solo slog across Fenris to slay a monster between campaigns. Think he's probably the sole survivor of his pack, and maybe fresh home from a rotation in the Death Watch? Converted from a chaos warrior. Going to experiment with some snow effects to do up the base, and then weather the cloak to match. Would love c&c if you've got any - i know its not the best photo so might be hard to comment.

Theoretical Following a few years of what I can only describe as 'bumbling around' in the hobby - jumping around and enjoying dalliances in Heresy, 40k, Kill Team, Age of Sigmar, Battletech, etc - my buddy and I decided it was time to 'lock in' and commit to some hard-and-fast hobby and gaming, preferable in a system that wouldn't change its clothes on us as soon as we finished slapping paint on our models. I did a deep dive into some of the older editions of Warhammer, looking for an edition that hit a sweet spot of completed-ness, nostalgia, and ease of play. I came up in (what's now) 1st Edition Horus Heresy, and was leaning towards diving back into that system, but the mere task of tracking down rules across several black and red books seemed like a chore, and the uphill struggle of building new armies for a game at 3,000pts wouldn't have us on the table anytime soon. Enter 4th Edition. Cheap books, smaller armies, and locked in a past that won't be altered. I picked up a smattering of books: the core rules and codexes for Space Marines, Chaos Space Marines, and Eldar. The older books are a treasure, and I'm reminded of HH's USR's, tables, and vehicle systems. We agreed to construct two forces from the same codex (Space Marines), and got to work hammering out some 1,000pt lists. The Dramatis Personae While my opponent opted for the ever-popular Salamanders, I decided that this would be the right time to finally get my on-again-off-again homebrew, the Cardinal Guard, onto the tabletop. For the purposes of list-building, a codex-compliant, by-the-book chapter. For the purposes of the hobby, a chance to flesh out the concept practically. Looking into the far future, I want to smash out some Wraithhost style Eldar, as well as some World Eaters - and my opponent's love of green doesn't just extend to Space Marines. Practical The wonders of the at-home STC device - a bevy of creators online, the ability to 3D-bash custom parts, and keeping it on a budget. I'm no master painter and firmly abide by the 3ft principle - get the models on the table, characterful from that angle and distance. What To Expect 50yd Target: hobby progress on our armies as we build to 1,000pt and later 2,000pt sizes. 100yd Target: game reports, what we like and don't about 4th Edition, and musings. 300yd Target: more armies, more games. Standby for more.

A while back I experimented with some new Space Marine paint schemes and found one I liked. I just was happy with the one I had originally chosen. I finally let loose the arrow to land where it may. Now at this point I have a conundrum. Is the red bolter housing too busy; should I go with a more neutral off-black? The squad and chapter markings are going to be red, if that makes a difference.

Well, its certainly been a hot minute this time hasn't it. I'm not really sure where 2024 went but I didn't get an awful lot done last year, and I'm determined to do things better this time! Last year I progressed a bit more with the Leviathan boxset, and by year's end had just eleven space marines left to do. Which sounds good until you consider that in my last post that number was eighteen and that the space marine contingent started off at twenty four. Yeah, I didn't hobby well. There's a lot of reasons I could give as to why this was the case but it doesn't change the fact that it happened. That's why I want to try and do better this year. To that end, I'm looking at setting myself some challenges. These will be aimed to either do something I've not done ever while also tackling my pile of potential. Let's dive in to it shall we: First challenge: Complete Leviathan Yes, a hold over from last year. This one should be obvious yet the most easiest as all that's left is to finish the Sternguard Veterans and the last five Infernus Marines. The Sternguard are currently at this stage- They've been base coated, washed, had the blue, white relayered. The Sargent has even had further work with his tabard and helmet getting cleaned up. The Infernus Marines are blue, not much to say there. With that in mind, I'm wanting to try something that was suggested to me in the Forums, that of barrel drilling! I've loaned a small drill for a different task (more on that one in a bit), just need to see if I've got the right size bits. Of all the challenges I've got planned, this is the one giving me pause. Had I done this before undercoating anything, I think it'd be easier to get my head around on doing. The second challenge is probably the hardest painting wise. Simply put, I'm painting a Primarch. Lion'el Johnson to be precise, and I'm not just doing it once, I'm doing it twice. See, I got him as part of my desire to collect loyalist primarchs (pretty easy since there is only two of them so far!) However my son also wanted and got him as part of his dark angels army. Benefit here is that in keeping with the rest of his army, he wants winged helmet, while I'm going bare head all the way. Once they're done, my aim is to paint Dark Angels till July comes around. Third Challenge...is a presumption on my part, that there's going to be another Call to Arms event. If there is, it's bug time once again. I've been slowly expanding my Tyranids with 9 more Leapers, a full brood of Hormagaunts and a Hive Tyrant. The Hive Tyrant is the reason I got the drill. Someone at my FLGS suggested that by magnetising all the weapon options and wings, and using the Winged Tyrant legs and tail, that I could have my cake and eat it. I would have a modular Hive Tyrant that could serve as a normal one, a winged one and the Swarmlord if I also do the head (if I can). My original option was just to buy a torso piece from somewhere and have two Hive Tyrants...May still do that, comments are welcome! I'm still tempted to grab a few more bugs to add to the pile maybe a Tyrannofex or a Biovore, maybe one of the new Lictors. Got six months to figure out what I want! After September...depends on how things turn out GW release schedule wise. If a certain faction of Space Marine is released, my nids will finally have their true base rivals (i like to base my armies in opposing pairs, Ultramarines vs Necron, Tyranids vs...well, let's see). Though GW may not get much more money out of me due to another company entering the tabletop market with a franchise I love, I'm sure there's plenty of painting in my future. My plan is to update the blog whenever I hit a milestone (like finishing these bloody Sternguard for instance!) Till next time! (Will hopefully not be another year!)

Working on the test model for my own chapter, the Thalassians. The green armor is done. Looking at this, I see that I need to add a few point highlights to the helmet. I've overshaded the tabard and need to bring that up a bit, but I think the texture on it is coming across well. C&C is welcome! This is going to start with a six-man firstborn kill team, and then I'll be working on the Leviathan box.

It's been a while since I did a blog post, in fact I haven't posted since completing my Call to arms vow back in the summer. I'd like to say I had a great excuse for not posting, but it was mainly just being distracted by other things such as playing Space Marine II. I have still managed to carry on building and painting a fair few models in this time and having a free time over the Christmas holidays I've gotten quite a bit more finished. 2024 Completed: Following on from my Tau army additions with my Call to Arms pledge I just wanted to add a couple of things to finish off the army with a second broadside suit with magnetised weapon options and with the release of Hivestorm I had to get the Vespids both for my Tau army and as a Kill team in their own right. I now don't need anything else for my Tau (with the exception of a Taunar supremacy suit and a Tiger shark, but they will have t wait until I win the lottery). Next up is the additions to my homebrew Primaris marine army starting with an infernus squad using the Combat Patrol magazine exclusive miniature and the start collecting set one. A converted Captain in terminator armour using one of the ones from the 2 copies of Combat Patrol issue 1 and spare parts from the multi part captain kit and lastly a Phobos strike team for Kill Team with a small amount of kit-bashing to add two reivers to the squad and give the medic a full apothecaries back pack and accessories. I also revisited my Deathwatch, using the other terminator captain to create this rule of cool Deathwatch captain. I also had the idea of building a custom primaris killteam for the deathwatch, kit-bashed from numerous kits and including some 3d printed parts many of which I created myself (and available here if you are interested). Looking at the updated rules for primaris killteams in 40k I might even be on the right path for when they ever get around to updating the Deathwatch in Kill Team. On a whim after seeing numerous Death Guard army lists that included sorcerors in terminator armour, I kitbashed this one to add to my army. Lastly, I also manage to get quite a bit of scenery tabletop ready as well. Into the New Year: Looking forward, I already have several miniature partially painted on my desk, to hopefully complete in the next couple of weeks, namely 5 infiltrators and 5 incursors along with the company heroes squad to add to my marine army. I want to participate in the "Knives in the shadows" Kill team painting challenge, but don't fancy painting up the Tempestus Aquilons from the Hive team box and was intending to sell them. Fortunately I got the Inquisition Agents kit for Christmas which should make for an interesting Kill-team, to bring them up to full numbers I have just ordered a box of Sisters of silence to fill out the team. While on the subject of the Inquisition, I also have sitting round waiting for paint the Warhammer+ Inquisitor and cohorts along with the previous years Kasrkin sergeant and a random sister of battle, that want to get painted and off my desk. I also have this xmas present to myself, I hope to get painted up and find a suitable place to display it. Looking forward to the rest of the coming year I expect much of my hobby time to be Eldar focused with the new miniature due to arrive in the not too distant future. I also need to play more games, rather than just amass more unused armies and kill teams. With it seemingly more difficult to get together with the couple of friends I usually play with, I intent to try and join a local gaming club to hopefully address this imbalance. Anyway, thanks for reading and Happy New Year

2024 - YEAR IN REVIEW THE SIN EATERS My first major project on returning to the hobby - well, the first once I liked enough to stick with properly - finally hit that all-important 2,000 point mark earlier this year. It's currently 2,070, meaning I can swap out a character as required, as I did this last weekend in a final spurt of tabletop play for the year. I'll go into the individual units in a moment, but just at a top-level, I'm very happy with these chaps. The Crusade, though shortened, was a blast. Killed a lot of Tyranids, was killed MORE by Tyranids, and generally had fun marching up and down the board and blasting away in Firestorm. I have now played two games with the new Grotmas BA detachment, which... Would have been way, way better with my heavily character-focused Crusade army. Ah well. I'm happy with the scheme, and they look nice as an army, which is what really counts. Fallen Martos, and the Firestrike Servo-Turrets. My second Ballistus - chosen mostly for availability, and because I did need some more anti-monster blasting - was a delight to paint, and a cleaner job than I managed with the first one. Much of my 2024 painting on the Sin Eaters came out nicer than 2023, though not all, and I'm egnerally quite happy with how the scheme applies to this big, flat-panel models. Gives me a lot of room to freehand those checkmarks. The turrets were oddly compelling, too. They did good work in Crusade, mostly in keeping some monsters wary with that 4+ overwatch. I'm glad I cut off the Techmarines, they look so much nicer as fully automatic blasters. Said techmarines saw some new life a little later, too... Headtaker of the 3rd, Techmarine Stahl, and Primus Medicae Malcos. I did say the army was character heavy. Where 2023 was spent building and converting Chaplains, I branched out a little in 2024. The techmarine is made from some printed bits and a body and head cut from the turrets. Headtaker - a Judiciar - is a mashup of bits from all over, and the Apothecary is mostly spare parts from Leviathan and an ancient metal servitor arm. I'm most happy with the paint on Stahl, the green really pops, and I almost wish I had managed to fit more of it into the greater army. Maybe when I finally get some hellblasters as I slowly get this force to 3,000 points. Headtaker is a killer, though, he put in some work in the final few Crusade games. Captain Cominius, and 3rd Company Command Squad. Now, I know what you're thinking: 'Wormwoods, buddy, it's a Crusade, why did you only finish your general with like 3 games to go, ensuring he would be WAY behind on XP?' Look. The Command Squad wasn't out yet, and I didn't have the parts. Whatever. He's proven to be absolutely useless, and his friends even more-so, but who cares? It's a lovely kit, and a fine excuse to go even more ornate and over-the-top. Quite happy with the stolen Custodes banner, and the headswap on Cominius. Minimal other conversion work, just head swaps, and the sneaking suspicion that the Company Champion really is just short, and not just unfortunately posed. Immortals of The Plate. The final addition to the army in 2024 was this charming little gang of psychos. An easy arm-swap with some spare claws from a fellow hobbyist who prefers the hammers, I like how they came together on Leviathan bodies. They're even a little cleaner than the normal terminators, and slightly less garbage! They didn't get to join any real games for the Crusade, but put in some work over the weekend, buzzing through Khorne Berserker and having a wonderful time. That's it for the Sin Eaters for now. I'm taking a break from them to focus on my next summary topic, and army for an upcoming Crusade starting in 2025, along with some non-40K work in The Old World. Painting Empire State Troops is like eating popcorn chicken, I can't stop! Still, I'll be adding more Sin Eaters at some point, likely some Hellblasters, some Death Company, more Jump Intercessors, and maybe even - horror of horrors - a tank! We'll see what happens.

Having been barely keeping up with the hobby for several years, Indomitus reignited my passion for 40k last year, so I decided to try to actually build a force. This time it will be Primaris space marines, but still my beloved 3rd Company of the Ultramarines. The plan is to build the complete company, including officers and attached specialists and a dreadnought, plus a ten-man Deathwatch kill team, and such a project needs a fresh thread, so here I am. In terms of bulding the company, I will be dividing it into combat squads, to avoid becoming overwhelmed or bored, and alternate those with Deathwatchers and officers, so that it will go Combat Squad > Deathwatch > Combat Squad > Officer > Combat Squad > Deathwatch... and so on. This should offer a decent balance between progress and sameness of models. I started an Intercessor veteran sergeant (the 30th anniversary model) as a one-off before I decided to make a full army, so I decided to finish him before doing the rest of the combat squad. If you visit the Ultramarines subforum, you may have seen him, but here he is again with one of the Necrons the 3rd is fighting: The Necron is really just a color scheme test model, not the start of an army, any time soon at least. The rest of Combat Squad Ardias is in progress, with their bodies only needing cleanup: The bolt rifle arms are coming along too, I just need to highlight the black and tidy up everything before gluing them on. Then it's just the other arms, backpacks and heads and then finishing touches. Of course, an Intercessor squad isn't the end of it. I have plenty of plans for all the squads and in particular the command cadre. I don't feel like typing out all the minute details of my plan that I've spent the last nine months overthinking, so for now I will just finish off with something black for now:

Hello fellow Blood Angel brethren. I finally decided to step out of the shadow and share my stuff with you. It took me quite a while (years) to even create an account for B&C, but here I am. I hope to get some painting motivation by sharing my stuff with you and please feel free to critizise my work and help me improve. So, who am I? I live in Germany and mostly play friendly games with my friends. We have some competative thoughts behind our lists, but mainly it's for the fun and not the victory. As a teenager my first encounter with GW was Space Quest, or for the non european people Space Crusade. Since then I was driven to the guys in red and after I got the 2nd edition starter box, I decided to clad those space warriors in red. Here I am, over two decades later and sharing my stuff with you. BA are not my only army, but my most beloved and by far most played. I still have some minis from back then and don't mind using them in games. As this thread grows, I'm sure you'll see some sins from the past and many models that are still WIP for more then ten years or even longer. Also my painting skills have improved over the years, but as I am a slow painter I never bothered to touch a finished mini again, bare the most severe cases. Since the realease of contrast paint I switched to them, as I think they really speed up my painting and used right can give you a wonderful result. So here I present you some of my finished HQ choices:

I’m building a Landraider and want you to help me decide whether it be a Crusader or a Redeemer. I play Black Templars as the main Astartes. Crusader is fluffy, but I love the massive flamer … don’t want to magnify anything just will choose one or the other.

So after quite a long hiatus, I'm back on the B&C. These days I paint and collect a lot of different Space Marines Chapters, so I figured that the Hall of Honour is probably the best place for me to show what I've been up to recently. To begin with, here's a small selection of some of my painted Space Marine models. Death Eagle Veteran, in the classic Rogue Trader colour scheme. Captain of the Golden Halos Chapter. Flesh Eaters Veteran Sergeant. Carcharadons Tactical Marine. Angels Porphyr Intercessor. Red Talons Tactical Marine. Void Scorpion (homebrew Chapter). Howling Griffons Tactical Marine. Brazen Claws Assault Intercessor. Golden Hands Tactical Marine (homebrew Chapter). Blood Drinkers Space Marine (based on Rogue Trader artwork/cover of White Dwarf 137).

Saw this over on reddit just now. I don't remember seeing any information posted about it here or it being previewed by GW. Looks like it might be another Target exclusive or at least is meant to interact with their last game as there is a card for Titus but his model is not included, speaking of models it's using some of the models from the Warhammer Heroes kill team. More images in the spoiler Link to reddit thread