I worked for GW about a million years ago, but I never really got into Warhammer 40K. For one reason or another I just really enjoyed the Warhammer Fantasy world, and my High Elves even got featured in an issue of White Dwarf alongside Steve Fuller's Undead.
All that changed about three years ago when Games Workshop blew up the fantasy world I loved so much, and replaced it with a new iteration for a new generation, called Age of Sigmar. It's... fine. It's just not the game I grew up playing. I kind of decided I'd be all done with GW at that point.
But over the last few months I've started to look around and discover that, for whatever reason, I have a pretty big collection of unpainted Space Marines and quite a few Orks. From the Assault on Black Reach and Battle for Vedros starter sets, my sizeable collection of Gorkamorka Orks (I loved that game and the models!), and bits and bobs I've picked up over the years, I actually have a decent sized army for both factions.
So I decided to start painting them up. This blog will keep track of my progress.
To start off with, I had a few of the push-to-fit marines already assembled, so I primed them up and very quickly settled on Black Templars. That army was really brought into the fore during the 3rd edition of the game, which I think of as "my" 40K. That's the one that was released when I was working for GW, and I've always thought the Black Templars look much sharper than, say, Ultramarines.
The years have indeed gone by, and we now find ourselves on, believe it or not, the EIGHTH edition of the Warhammer 40K rules. I picked up a copy of the rules, the Space Marine codex, and the temporary list for the Orks (the greenskins are supposed to get a proper codex "soon", and currently a lot of the internet thinks that's going to be in Orktober). The one big change from my day is that the company has recently introduced "Primaris" marines, which are twice as big as regular "classic" marines. For now, I'm going to paint up what I've got, but I might get some of the big boys at some point. Right now, I've got quite a few classic marines to paint up.
The only real rule I have to stick to with Black Templars is that I can't use Librarians. No biggie. I don't think I even have one anywhere. While I can (and one day may) have them squad up in their weird Crusader units, for now I'm going to treat them like a regular marine army, centered around lots of tactical squads.
The sergeant pictured below has a bit of a story to him. He's a metal figure who originally had a power fist, but somewhere along the way I decided that I needed it for another figure, so it got hacked off. I replaced it with a with an arm holding a chainsword from the Black Templars upgrade sprue, and now he fits right in with my plastics.
I've never really cared much about min-maxing my armies; I have a LOT of grots, for example. I don't field stuff because it's unstoppable. I put together the stuff I like, and then I put that on the table and we'll just see how that does. One of the advantages to this approach is that I don't have to paint something I don't want to paint, and I don't care that much if I lose. My goal with this whole project is to build two viable, roughly equal armies, so that I can invite friends over to roll dice and shoot stuff.
I actually have a couple of the Black Templars special figures, including the slightly rare-r version of the Emperor's Champion. I'll paint those up once I've gotten a little more comfy painting marines.
This is the entire marine army so far, but I'm putting paint on at least one figure every day, so it's growing pretty quickly.
I'll keep you posted on my progress!
All that changed about three years ago when Games Workshop blew up the fantasy world I loved so much, and replaced it with a new iteration for a new generation, called Age of Sigmar. It's... fine. It's just not the game I grew up playing. I kind of decided I'd be all done with GW at that point.
But over the last few months I've started to look around and discover that, for whatever reason, I have a pretty big collection of unpainted Space Marines and quite a few Orks. From the Assault on Black Reach and Battle for Vedros starter sets, my sizeable collection of Gorkamorka Orks (I loved that game and the models!), and bits and bobs I've picked up over the years, I actually have a decent sized army for both factions.
So I decided to start painting them up. This blog will keep track of my progress.
To start off with, I had a few of the push-to-fit marines already assembled, so I primed them up and very quickly settled on Black Templars. That army was really brought into the fore during the 3rd edition of the game, which I think of as "my" 40K. That's the one that was released when I was working for GW, and I've always thought the Black Templars look much sharper than, say, Ultramarines.
The years have indeed gone by, and we now find ourselves on, believe it or not, the EIGHTH edition of the Warhammer 40K rules. I picked up a copy of the rules, the Space Marine codex, and the temporary list for the Orks (the greenskins are supposed to get a proper codex "soon", and currently a lot of the internet thinks that's going to be in Orktober). The one big change from my day is that the company has recently introduced "Primaris" marines, which are twice as big as regular "classic" marines. For now, I'm going to paint up what I've got, but I might get some of the big boys at some point. Right now, I've got quite a few classic marines to paint up.
The only real rule I have to stick to with Black Templars is that I can't use Librarians. No biggie. I don't think I even have one anywhere. While I can (and one day may) have them squad up in their weird Crusader units, for now I'm going to treat them like a regular marine army, centered around lots of tactical squads.
The sergeant pictured below has a bit of a story to him. He's a metal figure who originally had a power fist, but somewhere along the way I decided that I needed it for another figure, so it got hacked off. I replaced it with a with an arm holding a chainsword from the Black Templars upgrade sprue, and now he fits right in with my plastics.
I've never really cared much about min-maxing my armies; I have a LOT of grots, for example. I don't field stuff because it's unstoppable. I put together the stuff I like, and then I put that on the table and we'll just see how that does. One of the advantages to this approach is that I don't have to paint something I don't want to paint, and I don't care that much if I lose. My goal with this whole project is to build two viable, roughly equal armies, so that I can invite friends over to roll dice and shoot stuff.
I actually have a couple of the Black Templars special figures, including the slightly rare-r version of the Emperor's Champion. I'll paint those up once I've gotten a little more comfy painting marines.
This is the entire marine army so far, but I'm putting paint on at least one figure every day, so it's growing pretty quickly.
I'll keep you posted on my progress!
RSS Feed
