+ inload: Where the Stone Oxen and Lions Stand +

+ Emperor's Children, 16th Millennial +

+ Work in progress Emperor's Children 'The Illuminator demands perfection!' +

+ Another short painting session last night sees progress being made to my 15mm Emperor's Children. I'm not a fan of batch painting, but it's really the only practical way I've found to make progress with this scale. They're not small enough to whip through like Epic, nor quite large enough to be worth trying to focus on them as individuals. The upsides are that the details are clean and reward quick, simple techniques. +

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+ Painting 15mm Emperor's Children +

+ I'm planning to work through four stages for these marines, summarised from left to right below. +

_1  Quick and simple – the model is painted with Screamer Pink. The bases are then painted with drybrushing, as described in an earlier inload [+noosphericinloadlink embedded+]. The model is then washed with Druchii Violet and the guns, backpack, studs and visible soft armour in Incubi Darkness. +

_2 Stage 2  This sees the metallics picked out with Ironbreaker. The midtones are then added with an even mix of Screamer Pink and Emperor's Children, favouring the upper parts and avoiding the recesses. +

_3  Having dried, the metallics are washed with Nuln Oil and the highlights added. Form highlights are Emperor's Children thinned with flow enhancer, over which are added Fulgrim Pink edge highlights to areas facing the light. +

_4 Detailing. The guns get an edge highlight of Vallejo Off-white, the eyes are picked out with Moot Green, and the Legion markings are added with gold (I think it's Liberator Gold, but wouldn't swear to it) a over a circle of Incubi Darkness. +

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+ Paint musings +

+ An overall shot of the force as it stood at the start of the evening. As usual when starting a new project, my mind is bubbling over with ideas for development and expansion – but I really think it's only right to at least get these all painted and ready before asking the ever-kind Lucifer216 to print any more! +

+ Natural light always shows things slightly differently; I find it lends itself better to colour accuracy (at least with my phone). Below are some shots from the desktop this morning. I don't think they bear up to too much close scrutiny, but I'm pleased with the overall effect even at this stage. Indeed – it's actually been nice to simplify things. +

+ Block colour space marines, with little in the way of individuality or complication, is how I remember the Epic battle reports of years ago. Armies painted like that have a lovely 'Legion' feel; of near-identical super soldiers, and I think that aesthetic is perfectly suited to 15mm. +

+ At 32mm, I like a bit of individuality, as the size and detail of the figures allows easy reference. Smaller than that, and it becomes considerably harder to tell the difference between different units at a glance. For that reason, I'll be keeping personalisation to a minimum here, perhaps lavishing a bit more time and attention on squad leaders and so forth. +

+ That will leave space for more elite units – Palatine Blades, Noise Marines (Kakophoni if you're feeling fancy) etc. – to be picked out with the addition of more silver and white. +

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+ Lore +

+ There's more to this hobby than painting and playing; so I wanted to come up with some background for the force in general. The Emperor's Children are a faction I've never really explored in depth, though they're a long-familiar name. Like the other three Chaos god-aligned Traitor Legions, I like how they represent a warning of taking a virtue to its extreme – for the Emperor's Children, pride curdled into arrogance. That's something that's long been tempting to explore – which I partially did in my Iron Hands narrative project, May You Live Forever, which followed a couple of Iron Hands during the Isstvan Dropsite Massacre. They encountered a few isolated Emperor's Children there, and so I'd like to touch back on that. +

+ Lucifer216 came up with the brilliant idea of producing some key figures in 32mm scale, and using forced perspective to get some shots. A lovely way to inject some personality and a great excuse to paint up some one-off larger figures, too. We thought it'd be good to generate some names, too, so my commander will be revelling in the name Lieutenant-Commander Dolichenus Tyrian, Prince of Chemos, Great Bull. +

+ Beyond this, however, I've left things fairly loose. Part of that is deliberate – I don't want to be distracted from making progress by diving into the minutiae of Legion's background and getting distracted. After all, everyone involved has a good solid understanding of the forces they're commanding and opposing, and I'd rather focus on the standard Legion troops than exceptions. +

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+ Gaming stats +

+ As outlined in this inload [+noosphericinloadlink embedded+], we're planning to use a modified version of Beyond the Gates of Antares (version 2) to play out this war. There's quiet a bit of counts-as and exceptions (mainly simplifying, but also some direct changes), so I thought I'd start drafting a reference sheet for us. I'll try to find some way of sharing it here. +

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