+ inload: Painting the Warden Titan +

+ Incertae Sedis +

+ Warden Titan painting progress +

+ Progress ticks over on the Warden Titan, with the shades established on the reds, and now ready for highlighting. I've also started the stripes on the black and white panels, and blocked in the trim. +

+++

+ Incertae Sedis +

Perhaps more importantly, the Warden now has a name – for what is any Engine without a boiler plate? The Incertae Sedis is ticking along smoothly, and I'm hoping to  get it largely polished off ahead of bigger things...

Here's a picture of the red prior to last night's work, set against Carnivore, so you can see the intended effect. At the moment, Incertae is looking flatter and more vibrant, because the glazes haven't yet enriched and knocked it back.

With that said, however, it's not that much different, and a spot of spit and polish will see him ready for the battlefield.

I've followed the notes for the rest of the Iron Skulls [+noosphericinloadlink embedded+], and I'm pleased with how rich the red is coming out. I'm in two minds about the silver head. Part of me likes the reference to 'Iron Skulls', but it also looks a bit unfinished. 

I'll likely reserve judgement until I've got the trim worked up and the surrounding metals muted. Perhaps some contrast will make it look a bit more intentional; perhaps I'll change the 'cheeks' to white; and perhaps I'll split the difference with some chequers or transfers or something.

Speaking of surrounding metals, at the moment they're really just a quick layer over the top of the undercoat. A few washes (Leviathan purple and Gryphonne sepia added wet in wet and allowed to mix and mingle) and some drybrushing layers will go a long way to adding some texture and interest.

The black and white panels have also been established. I find something surprisingly restful about painting hazard stripes freehand, and it's nice to follow the form with the shading. I've used a surprisingly deep grey for most of the the 'white' here – it's various mixes of Payne's grey and Vallejo cold white – so that the bright edge highlights will pop. You can just about see an example of this on the left of the upper thigh on the trailing leg below.

+++

+ inload: Leagues of Votann Hearthkyn Salvagers Killteam +

+ Merry little Christmas – what did you call us? +

+ The Leagues of Votann storm into the Antona Australis sector – or rather, are unearthed after a long time. +

+++

+ Squats – kin is kin +

I've posted quite a bit about space dwarfs in 40k over the years. I thought they were a concept that deserved to be involved in the Antona Australis sector (the PCRC's little corner of the 40k galaxy, where the majority of our battles are fought), so tucked the Ironstaff League in back around 2013, as one of those threads that I planned to explore one day. +

There's an inload about the League here – [+noosphericinloadlink embedded+] – and since then I've painted and built a few squats here and there. 

They've turned up as parts of tutorials [+noosphericinloadlink embedded+], and as part of my other projects; notably Castaway alongside Inquisitrix Barbari Kills in the Endworlds project  [+noosphericinloadlink embedded+], and in the Ashes of Armageddon, where they moonlight as part of the Norgyr League [+noosphericinloadlink embedded+].

+++

That little dip into the past should give you eyestrain from so much reading, so I'll leave this inload fairly short, and let the pictures of the painted Kill Team do the talking:

Warrior and Gunner – I think the yellow helms really help the models to pop, and give a nice retrohammer feel.

Kinlynk, Theyn and Lugger – the Theyn is from the other Kin Kill Team; I just wanted him to stand out a bit. His gun counts as a bolt revolver, based largely on the six-shooter-style bit.

A rear shot here to show the medic's backpack (centre), along with Tomb the dwarf's (a deep cut there, for anyone looking for out-of-universe references) walking suit. Again, this Thunderkin model is a stand-in for a normal Gunner with plasma beamer. I thought a Kill Team deserves at least some special effort.

J33VS and WSTR, the team's Ironkin, along with the... uh... other specialist, whose name escapes me. I've come to enjoy the Ironkin background after being a bit sceptical. 

... and to round things off, a big group shot. 

+++

+inload: Armageddon Prime tokens +

+ A holiday to Armageddon Prime +

'Come to sunny Armageddon Prime! The other continent on this key Imperial world!' 

+ Today's inload looks at some practical elements of this project to realise a fan-made second expansion to Battle for Armageddon; with respectful thanks to Jervis Johnson, Mark Gibbons, Richard Helliwell, Fangorn and Bill King for the inspiration +

Tangentially-related miniatures watch respectfully as a techpriest blesses the artworks.

+++

+ Progress towards Armageddon +

I've squeezed in two fun games of the original boardgame recently. We played the very basic game the first time, with the Imperials winning a Hail-Mary victory by offing Ghazghkull. The second game involved the Snakebites and Blood Axes from the Chaos Attack expansion, along with the treacherous Von Strab – and this was a thorough hammering for the Imperials. Both times were very enjoyable! 

It's a fun, simple and relatively quick game; if you can find a copy, I'd encourage you to give it a go.

Enthusiasm for this project has been running high, as it's firing off lots of interlocking interests. Squats, hand-painting, ork gargants (more on them in an article soon...), and even some gaming... 

Finding some focus in the hobby is good, but it's not everything!  Sometimes it's nice just to let enthusiasm carry you along freely.

+ Making tokens +

My set of counters for the game is looking a bit sun-faded, and as these things tend to go, I wondered if I could recreate them. The originals were given away as a print-to-play PDF by GW's Fanatic department many years ago, but I'm pretty sure they were created by scanning a set, rather than from the original print files, as the colours and resolution are a bit ropey. 

One idea crashed into another, and I thought it'd be fun to create a proper set for the Armageddon Prime expansion. I've been working on this expansion (the rules written by KillerKatana) on and off [+vis.ref this inload node: +noosphericinloadlink embedded+], and it seemed a great chance to polish up my Illustrator skills.

 

Here's a rundown of the Imperial tokens needed from the original boardgame:

• 8th–14th Armies 
• seven tokens with values 2 4 1
• 15th–20th Armies
• six tokens with values 2 3 1 values
• 2nd–7th Tank Divisions
• one token with values 7 4 2
• four tokens with values 6 4 2
• one token with value 5 3 2
• 3rd–6th Rough Riders and Light Brigade
• two tokens with values 2 2 3
• two tokens with values 1 2 3
• one token with values 1 1 4
• Hive gangs
• five tokens with values 2 3 1
• five tokens with values 1 2 1
• Fortifications
• eight tokens with values – x2 –

+++

I've taken a few creative liberties. I didn't want to copy them absolutely exactly for a few reasons. Firstly, it seems a bit uncreative – I'd rather iterate and develop the original idea than just make an carbon copy – and in any case having some differences future-proofs the set, so that you could in theory play both the Prime and Secundus theatres in an apocalyptic combined game. Finally, I have no desire to have GW looking askance at what is really just a couple of hobbyists playing about, so out of respect to the original designers and artists, and the spirit of the project, I wanted to add my own little flourish rather than just take.

Here's a look at the Imperial side. You can see the GW originals from the Fanatic download on the pasteboard (the darker area surrounding the white working areas):

Looking at things in detail was interesting. It suggested quite a bit about how the game was originally made, and how assets were re-used. A lot of the icons are from transfer sheets of the era, while others were re-used from Epic: Space Marine. Trying to find complementary typefaces and riffing on the artworks was a fun little exercise, and – even if I do say so myself – I think the result looks the part.

I was torn a little on whether to update things. Things like the Armageddon Steel Legion were still germinating at the time, so the Imperial Guard tokens are labelled rather starkly as (e.g.) 'Imperial Guard 1st Army'; things like Rough Rider formations were slowly being shuffled off into moth balls during this period as the main studio developed the Imperial Guard for 40k; and the colours are very bright and vibrant, as per the GW studio aesthetic of the time. There are lots more instances of little things like that – and of course the mechanics of the game rely to some extent on the names on the cards.

In the end, I thought doing a modern take would be a fun idea, but as this is really a bit of an homage to the original, I thought I'd split the difference. You can see how I've kept the 'Imperial Guard' text on the cards, but replaced '1st Army' with '1st Steel Legion', for example. You'll also spot the Imperialis (winged skull) symbol of the Guard in general has been replaced with the Steel Legion's logo.

(As an aside, the colours of the Guard Army Groups I used in The Ashes of Armageddon project was inspired by this game. You can see on the left how the 1st Army has a red circle with white logo; while the 8th–14th Armies are yellow with a black logo.)

This is slightly complicated because KillerKatana's rules for Prime suggest using only the second-rate armies from the original game, to represent the Hives of Prime being caught unprepared. A really cool and simple idea, but odd in isolation. I've resolved that by keeping the colours of the Army Groups from the original game, but renumbering them – that way there's no confusion between the armies of Armageddon Prime and Armageddon Secundus. The Departmento Munitorum will be pleased.

+++

+ Tanks and support +

Close inspection will also reveal that I've updated the silhouettes of the Tank brigades and Rough Riders; both also renumbered and noted as 'Prime' formations. The tank icons mostly  match those of the original game: a Stormhammer and Baneblades for the 1st–5th Prime Divisions (equivalent to the 2nd–6th of Secundus – the 1st there is a Shadowsword), but I couldn't resist replacing the old Basilisk with the more iconic Leman Russ.

The place of Rough Riders as quick response recon units has been supplanted in the Steel Legion background by Sentinels, so the walkers replace the symbols there for the 1st and 2nd Rough Rider Brigades – in much the same way as I justified the change in this article. However, I personally love Rough Riders – space cavalry really captures the degraded pseudo-historical theme of 40k for me, so the horseman icon is retained for the rest.

The Hive Gangs of Prime got a skeletal Eagle skull as their symbol – change for the fun of it, and to help distinguish between those of the original game; and the fortifications got a redesign, too – now closer to the modern 40k-era symbol for Fortifications.

+++

+ More challenges! +

Of course, not everything from the original was iconographic – quite a lot was hand-painted. The board was painted by Mark Gibbons, for example, and I'm guessing that the factories and hives were painted at the same time by that talented so-and-so, now working for the tabletop publisher Rookery Publications [+noosphericexloadlink embedded+]. Here they are: 

 

Again, directly lifting this seemed not entirely cricket, so I decided to set aside a couple of hours on Sunday afternoon to try a bit of an experiment, and broke out the paints to try my own crack at things:

I worked at four times the size of the originals – I'm no Mark Gibbons, and shrinking things down would tighten my sketchy work up nicely. Above you can see an early stage of the 10 x 10cm square I used for the Hive city tile alongside the original counters from the game.

... and here are the finished artworks: the Hive City and Factory – and the shared 'smouldering ruins' that makes up the reverse of each piece.

  

I then photographed them, resized them and dropped them into my aesthetigraphical-engine automat servitor (Adobe Illustrator) before putting on the text overlays. 

In the pict-capture below, the originals are shown on the left, while my efforts are on the right. I'm pleased with how they've come out – and I hope that the designers would get a kick out of seeing their efforts still inspiring new work years later.

+++

+ inload: Basing musings and heavy weapons +

+ Imperial Guard heavy weapons +

+ Lasguns can achieve a lot, but every Guardsman appreciates a big gun at their back. +

'Imperial Guard heavy weapons are crewed by a team of two men. Generally speaking, one crewman carries and fires the weapon whilst the other carries and loads ammunition. [...] This arrangement is unique to the Imperial Guard.'

+ Codex Imperial Guard +

So says the venerable first ever Codex the Imperial Guard got – unwittingly making basing and rebasing a source of low-level psychic angst for Guard players the subsequent decades.

These new weapon teams stood aside from the older Imperial Army models, where individual soldiers had their own (generally shoulder-mounted) gun. The new models were more akin to the field artillery  pieces from Rogue Trader, like ork Hop-Splat guns and Squat Mole Mortars, with separate models for the gun and the crew. At the time of release, this was a fun way to let you play with the cool 'gun team' models the GW were releasing for the metal Regiments then being rolled out.

The lascannon and mortar were unbased models, with the crew on separate 25mm bases; while the autocannon and heavy bolters had seats for the gunners and the loaders separate. The Catachan and Cadian missile launcher gunners were on cavalry bases of all things, while the other Regiments had both team members on 25mm. Quite a mix, and typical of the 'model first' approach of the period. Lots of players opted to put the guns on bases of various sizes, or otherwise adapt to what looked best to them. The Codex went on to give a few suggestions of how this all worked in practice, and we all happily bumped along.

Spool on a few more years, and new heavy teams were released in plastic. Whatever the weapon, all the teams were now consolidated/abstracted into a single 60mm base (flat rather than raised and bevelled, for some reason) containing the gun and two crew members. As tournament-style competitive gaming became more important, this was codified, so lots of players moved their old weapon teams onto 60mm bases for a few more editions 'til now, when the current 40k rules call for 50mm bases... I've got a certain recalcitrance to rebase purely to suit a new edition. Part of that's laziness, part of it's a sense that I don't want to mess around with models I'm happy with, and part of it's that I tend to edition hop, so it's all a bit academic: I'd be robbing Peter to pay Paul.

In all truth I've never been particularly fussed about sticking to the letter of the rules on basing anyway – the look of the models has usually driven any decisions I make on things like this. My Lamb's World Guard heavy weapons, for example, have been on 50mm bases for years because they're particularly delicate models and so looked lost on bigger bases. Likewise when I originally built these Steel Legion for the Aldebaran 18th [+noosphericinloadlink embedded+], I only had one heavy bolter, which I wanted to include in an infantry squad and so popped them team on an oval to fit with the squad better.

That's not a standard issue base!

However, blast markers, movement, range... all these things can (in theory) be affected by the shape and size of the base, so at gaming events where I've been playing pick-up games against new people, I've always made clear what's 'correct' and what's a change for the sake of visuals. Happily, in twenty-odd years of such gaming, I've never met anyone who's voiced any complaints, but there's part of me that does feel a little conflicted when models aren't on 'current, official' bases – I know I'd feel like a plum complaining about something so minor, so perhaps everyone's been keeping quiet out of politeness!

+++

+ Basing the Steel Legion +

All of which is really a long preamble into the topic of today's inload, in which I agonise about which bases to use for my heavy weapons teams.

Pictured here are some Steel Legion heavy weapon teams; some old, some new, and hopefully you can sympathise with my dilemma. From left to right we have a heavy bolter team on a 120 x 92mm oval; a heavy bolter team (just about balancing!) on a 50mm base; a lascannon team on a 60mm base and a lascannon mounted on a 40mm base together with two crew members.

Steel Legion missile launchers are much smaller models and so, unlike the other weapon teams, were provided with 25mm bases:

+ Consistency versus pragmatism +

To me, the oval works best for the heavy bolter: the 50mm is too small to support the gun and gunner together, while they'd be lost on a 60mm base. Conversely, the lascannon fits quite nicely on a 60mm base; and is substantial enough to sit on its own 40mm base, with the crew separate. That's much more convenient for storage and transport, but leaves the heavy bolter crew as the only ones on a combined base.

So let's try some other options for the lascannons. Here's one on a similar oval to the heavy bolter (though set at a different angle). Cool, but only possible because I've converted the crew...

Here's an example of the same team moved to a 50mm base, and here I think this works quite well. The team doesn't look so lost as the set on the 60mm base, and I suspect this'll be more practical for both storage and gaming.

However, it'd definitely agitate the brain worms to have one team on an oval and one on a 60mm round... argh!

After consulting my (very patient and indulgent) friends in the PCRC, I think I've decided on keeping the missiles on individual 25mm bases; the heavy bolters on ovals; and have lascannons on 50mm bases. But what are your thoughts – and how do you base your heavy weapon teams?

+++

Things like this are silly considerations in the grand scheme of things, but nothing halts work and kills enthusiasm for me like analysis paralysis. Having a plan in mind is useful – but for those instances where I just can't make up my mind, I sometimes find it helpful to press ahead with stuff I am sure about – in this instance, how I'm painting the coats on the infantry.

One big batch later – as noted in this inload [+noosphericinloadlink embedded+], I'm aiming for a balance between effect and speed rather than a highly-polished display result – I've got the coats of all of the original figures in the army completed, so the next stage will be revisiting the guns and greys.

After that, I'll turn my attention to the goggles, faces and leathers; leaving just the Army Group symbol (white lightning bolt on green field) to finish.

... but to finish today's inload, here's the hero of the hour, our currently nameless Primaris Psyker, who's taken on quite a character and become a favourite after the few 2nd edition games we've had.

+ inload: Painting Silver Stars +

 + War of the False Primarch: Painting more Silver Stars +

+ Come and see. +

+ An inload looking at some work in progress painting on my Silver Stars for the War of the False Primarch, ahead of their not-quite Index Astartes. +

+++

+ [REDACTED] +

Are they? Aren't they? Lost or Forgotten, disguised traitors, a sinister alien artifice – or something entirely more esoteric?

The meat of the narrative in +Some Things Are Best Left Forgotten+ is, I feel, is in the five 'canon' Pentarchy Chapters, and the eleven(ish) Chapters of the Partisans, but the Silver Stars offer key background that gives the others something to shine against.

They were always intended to (and will) remain fairly anonymous and underexplored, but I thought it'd be underserving the people who have painted up some examples to not have any info, so rather than an 'Index Astartes' article, they'll instead have an 'Index Apocrypha', a bit like the Rogue Trader era-inspired Spacewolves Chapter [+noosphericinloadlinkembedded+], with the details left deliberately unresolved.

In short, you're going to get a look at the various theories surrounding them (and goodness there have been a lot!), including lots inspired by ideas that followers of the project have asked.

+++

To that end, then, I've been polishing things up. A further ten Silver Stars are nearing completion, along with the chap at the top of the inload, who is an as-yet-undiscovered character, bearing a Heat-Death Nihilation Mace and a sword, which may or may not be rainbow-hued.

The process I've been following is from my original recipe for the Pseudolegion, which you can inload here [+noosphericinloadlinkembedded+]; and they're getting to the stage that I'll need to add the markings, which you can dig through here: [+noosphericinloadlinkembedded+]

First up, three regular ol' Tactical Marines/Legionaries. As usual when building models, I aim for a couple of more interesting poses for every half-dozen 'normal' ones. That sort of proportion means that the army as a whole looks suitably military and determined, but there's interesting stuff to look at if you want to. 

Here, two carrying boltguns help to frame and set off one throwing grenades. All are in the curiously anonymous Mark II 'Crusade' power armour (or at least a very good replica).

Plumes are seemingly de rigeur this millennium for the Silver Stars; they add a little flourish, but don't seem to have particular relevance to the individual's status.

A volkite caliver-bearing Veteran here is flanked by two Pseudolegionaries with chainswords. 

... and because I can't resist setting up a shot or two in action, you can see how these will be used. If you'll forgive me showing a glimpse behind the curtain, it's surprising how few individual models you need to give the impression of a crowd.

There's about fifteen Silve Stars here, of which a substantial proportion are basecoated, as shown above, rather than finished and polished up.

+++

+ inload: Legio Maximal background and the Warlord Titan 'Consequens Indevitatus' +

+ The Wages of Sin +

+ In which we look at a Lucius-pattern Warlord Titan, scribble down some notes on Legio Maximal, and consider whether to fight Eldar or Orks first. +

+++

+ Who are the Legio Maximal? +

The Vigilants (Legio Maximal) are the brainchild of the Adeptus Titanicus and Legions Imperialis podcast Maximal Fire – hence the name – who ran a contest to explore the background of their Titan Legion, and their surrounding domain. My entry seemed to catch their imagination, and I was lucky enough to win a lovely pile of loot! 

A YouTube video on the background for the Vigilants, or Legio Maximal, can be found on the Maximal Fire Podcast channel in this vid-link [+noosphericexloadlink embedded+] (go subscribe!), but if you prefer written content, here's the text:

+ 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

***

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!

+++

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. 

+++

+ 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.

+++

+ 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?

+++

+ inload: Salamanders reinforcements for The Corsair Gambit III +

+ Combat Strategy +

+ Salamanders reinforcements for The Corsair Gambit III +

+ Another Epic-scale campaign event is coming up – the closing part of Maximal Fire's Corsair Gambit. You can get a ticket here [+noosphericexloadlink embedded+], if you fancy joining in. Having taken the Salamanders to the first two, I wanted to be there in the closing stages, too. +

+ Into the Fires of Battle! +

+++

+ Plans and preparation +

The event pack notes that the game size has increased to 3,000pts, so I've got some building and painting to do – though in a pinch I have plenty of Epic Ultramarines and various Titans that can fill in some space, so the pressure is off. Nevertheless, I'd like to have a nice cohesive army, and it'd be good to round off the Salamanders and apply some of the lessons I learned at the previous events. 

You can pick up on the previous panic-painting sessions here [+noosphericinloadlink embedded+], if you're interested in what the rest of the army looks like.

Long-time inloaders will know I like to build campaign-specific stuff for events like this, and since the fighting is taking place on the forgethrone of Legio Maximal, Nabed-Paleae, I'm planning to take a Warlord Titan. The points restrictions for allies (no more than 30%) mean that I'll have to replace Profugon Iratus, the Reaver who spearheaded the previous campaigns, but I do want to make sure that there's at least one Titan from the Legio there, fighting for its homeworld.

+++

+ Salamanders +

While a Warlord Titan will gobble up a significant amount of points (and also help to keep the number of Detachments/Formations down to help with game speed), I've also got some new Space Marines to paint. This is a mix of infantry and armour:

I think Epic-scale games looks best when there's a combined arms approach, with a range of everything from infantry, armour, aircraft and War Engines involved. Happily, GW's new FAQ for Legions Imperialis has addressed quite a few of the bits I disliked about the base ruleset, and has gone some way to rein in the strength and flexibility of infantry.

Nevertheless, what Space Marine army doesn't have lots of Space Marines? I had some Marines left on-sprue from previous events, so it's time for their time in the sun – and guilt-free, as they'll now behave more reasonably than their super-speedy previous incarnation. On the blocks are:

• 8 stands of Tactical Marines
• 2 stands of Plasma Support Marines
• 2 stands of Missile Support Marines
• 2 Command stands.

These won't add up to a huge amount of points, but will allow me to bulk up Detachments and give my marines some real sticking power around objectives. The Salamanders Legion special rule makes them very resilient morale-wise, and this will combine well with the Demi-Company Formation special rule, which makes supporting non-infantry better at supporting them when capturing objectives.

As you can see above, I have created a monstrous 'painting sprue' to hold the marines while I spray and paint them. To do this, simply snip off the extraneous supports, trim those below, and glue it to the remaining sprue so the models stand upright, in a consistent orientation. The two-part missile marines and plasma marines, some of which are oriented differently to the Tacticals, are cut off individually and superglued straight to the bit at the front of the painting sprue.

Once in position, you can prime with brown (I use Colour Forge's Hyrax Brown), then do a zenithal spray of Salamander Green – that is, keep the sprue at a consistent angle, and spray downwards onto the models, so the brown remains visible in the lower recesses.

The same zenithal spraying approach was taken for the vehicles, though since they're considerably larger, I also turned them upside-down and gave them a quick spritz with a darker green to suggest reflected environmental light. The additional armour units are:

• 6 Land Raiders
• 3 Predators
• 2 Kratos
• 5 Land Speeders
• ... and 4 Rhinos, which don't currently have a place in the list, but are on standby to fill in space.

The Kratos are that rare thing in my army – a unit that doesn't have any place in previous editions of the game, and are included slightly begrudgingly as the only Heavy Armour choice currently available to Marines. With that said, I like the models a lot more now I have them in hand, even if they do have the weird half-visible tracks that I find so odd about the newer Marine Armour (Sicarans likewise flashing a bit of thigh).

In terms of armament, I've picked one of each Kratos main gun – primarily to try each one out. These will be Command Tanks, and if time allows, I'd like to go to town on these a little bit with markings and freehand. The Predator squadron is armed with lascannon turrets and heavy bolter sponsons as a bit of a change from the others, which have the old-school autocannon turrets and lascannon sponsons.

+++

+ A minor rant on list-building +

You'll spot that I've got 'spare' Rhinos that may or may not make the list, and that's because I can't bring myself to write a formal list just yet. I find army building in Legions Imperialis a chore. There's loads of fiddly technical hoops to jump through – 'you must have X'; 'you can't have Y'; 'you're only allowed 30%' – but they don't really do much to rein in abuse, as the stories of LI tournaments attests, with armies made of hundreds of Missile Support Marines, Dreadnoughts and Warmaster Titans, with a scant few stands of Tactical Marines to make it legal.

Secondly, the divided nature of the army list across loads of books makes experimenting with lists more awkward; and then there are odd decisions of iconic units like Whirlwinds and Vindicators still not being out, or the Land Raider, the Space Marines' battle tank for forty years inexplicably being made into a Transport...

Oof. All exhausting, and another unnecessary bit of 'mental friction' that prevents people from picking up what is at root a very simple and fun game.

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+ Painting +

Once dry, I started painting both infantry and vehicles using the technique outlined in this inload: [+noosphericinloadlink embedded+]. They're ticking over nicely, but I think I'll have to pick up the pace a bit to get them all up to scratch in time for the event. 

Of course, this is where future-proofing comes in handy, because I've got a pile of bases ready and waiting from the last big batch of Epic Salamanders I did – once the marines and Land Speeders are painted, it'll just be a case of gluing them in place.

Speaking of the Land Speeders, the squadron needs a sixth member – en route from the piractical forge-moons of eBay – and because the only ones I can find are pairs, I'll end up with six with the flamer and multimelta option.

It may be objectively worse than the plasma and heavy bolter variant, but who cares when I can indulge the pyromaniacal desires of my mean green Space Marines?

+++

+ What else is new? +

As you'll see below, there are some 32mm Salamanders awaiting a bit of painterly love.

Oh, and this...