+ inload: Legions Imperialis Corsair Gambit painting +

+ Drake Hunters – 5th Company Salamanders +

'The 5th has a reputation of destroying large enemy constructs and alien horrors. Its members specialize in slaying the salamander drakes of Nocturne. As a Reserve Company, they rarely fight together but instead are used to reinforce other companies during campaigns. In battle, they favor acting as mobile weapons platforms instead of static defense and use a large amount of Dreadnoughts. They also make extensive use of attack craft and heavy gunships.'

– Codex supplement: Salamanders

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One of the great appeals of Epic-scale gaming is that you can easily make armies that feel like armies, throwing whole companies into the conflict. If you're into the pseudo-historical side, there's a lot of fun and creativity possible in designing colours or markings or campaign banners that fit well into the established material. 

Codex: Armageddon [refcapture={ABOVE}] has a few variants and ideas in yellow, while this artwork shows a yellowy-orange pauldron for the 5th. In the post-Primaris landscape, the 5th Company is a definite orange, rather than yellow with orange shadows, but that's part of the fun of painting your own models – you get to choose.

The Salamanders don't have anywhere near the amount of background lore and artwork as the 'Big Chapters', but there's still a huge amount from which to draw inspiration. With that said, if you want to be really strict and 'rivet-countery', I think the Salamanders aren't a great place to start, with lots of retcons, overlooked details and contradictory information. 

As I've noted in earlier inloads, I think regarding the lore as 'true for a certain period of time' is about as good as you'll get. Of course, that also makes them a great place to start being creative!

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As you can see, I've painted these marines to have yellow pauldrons with black Legion/Chapter icons. Having different markings on these figures to the rest of the army (which are green with black as a secondary and white details) is very useful from a practical point of view – it's easier for everyone involved to distinguish formations from one another, and is also more interesting for me to paint, keeping me engaged. 

The Epic scale makes it easy to handwave a great deal of otherwise curious wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff and allow these figures topull double duty for both HH-era and Armageddon-era gaming; but I still find it fun to make something that'll fit neatly in both – after all, this is a collaborative hobby, so I want to make sure that those who lean harder into the 'historical' side of Legions Imperialis/Epic aren't too offended. 

It's partially for that reason that I picked yellow as the heraldry colour. It's got precedent in both HH and 40k eras as an accent colour, and helps to make the base green pop. 

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+ Roll call +

What have we got here? I had sufficient models to put together 9 Tactical stands (by drafting in sergeants, the odd veteran and squad banner bearers, you can have five on each stand and still stretch it), 2 Plasma Support squads and 2 Missile Support squads.  Besides that, I put together a Command stand, too, with a converted banner bearer and a Terminator Sergeant standing in for the Officer. I like a bit of variety in the HQ models.

I think it's important to remember that these are 8mm models, and meant to be fielded en masse. Detail and precision aren't necessarily your friends here, as they'll stretch the time needed to get your forces on the board. Sometimes, 'fair and finished' is the goal, rather than jewel-like individuality.

As an example of what I mean, looking at a stand chosen at random reveals the hideous daubings importance of abstraction at this scale. I think the freehand Salamanders symbols on the pauldrons do a pretty good job of evoking the drake's head Legion icons, and when seen at actual size, the effect is fair. Nevertheless, they're far from perfect. Where you decide you want to strike the balance is worth thinking about in your plan... just don't let your aspirations stop you from getting started.

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+ What's next? +

These infantry mark the last in the list for this coming weekend; fittingly the reserve company being used to expand and plug gaps in the line of battle.

That leaves the vehicles to polish up and the Warlord to paint. I'm feeling quietly confident about this, as the tanks are nearly there. They'd be fine to field as-is, but I think an evening's spit and polish will do wonders to bring a sparkle to the battlefield.

To do, then:

• 6 Land Raiders
• 6 (well, 7, as there's an extra) Land Speeders
• 4 Rhinos
• 2 Kratos (Kratoi?)
• 3 Predators
• 2 Contemptor Dreadnoughts

... which sounds like I lot, but as you can see, isn't too arduous:

These have all been basecoated, washed, had the blacks and metals picked out, and basically need the decorative metallics (the bronzes) added, along with the tracks and markings. Should – cross fingers – be relatively quick.

Which leaves the elephant in the room, Consequens Indevitatus, Warlord Titan of the Vigilants. The base, thank the good Lord, is done; and the metallics laid down. 

It's now whether I can make a good stab at painting the rest of it over the course of two evenings, while also not falling asleep at the event!

But is it an event if it's not a caffeine-fuelled-late-night-painting-the-day-before-deployment event?

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