The Colours of Chaos

Having started with a collection of miniatures from the previous edition of Warhammer 40K, I already had a good selection of units to choose from. That means some of them were also already painted. However, displaying my long cultivated ability in the painting department usually yields less than impressive results. My earliest attempts at a painting scheme left me with what I had been calling the Bone Giants. Large expanses of unshaded, unblended, and barely washed metallic paints were the hallmark of the one unit I had finished. They lacked the luster I so desperately wanted, but at least made a nod towards the Iron Warriors, a chapter with which I am quite obsessed, fluff-wise. Suffice to say I had to either improve upon this painful, if not total, failure or abandon it in favour of a new design.







Thinking I needed a new approach, I tried to create a variation of the Storm Lord painting scheme. That didn't end so happy either, as my dry brushing skills are far from 'leet' as they say. Though I love the contrast, I am still left with either improve or abandon. At least now I had two bad paint jobs to choose from.



A couple of days ago I crawled through the bug infested basement where we keep all our paints and retrieved an old can of wood varnish. I was going to try dipping. I had done it once before and was not as happy as I could have been with the results, but I was lazy and desperate....mostly lazy. I figured I would attempt the dipping on one of my silver saturated marines and it didn't turn out so bad. With the exception of a little gunk at the bottom, which I had to quickly clean off, the varnish did its job. Incidentally, a green wash from my last attempt to make this model look like a Plague Marine really jumped out, especially on the backpack. With a little more practice, I think I can get these models looking relatively close to the Reborn paint scheme in the book.










Thus, I found my intended paint scheme. The next step is to change the entire above squad into looking like this. I think I am going to play around with the green wash and such to see what happens.

My choice now is whether I should clean the blue marines and go totally Reborn, or if I should try dipping on them and see what happens. Having begun to tire of testing my poor paint skills, my mind is leaning towards the former of the two choices

And So It Begins...

This is a blog dedicated to the creation and use of my Chaos Space Marine force for Warhammer 40,000 (and friends). While my main focus is on finishing a 2000 point competitive tournament army, my long term goal is to eventually have a fully painted Apocalypse army.

This blog will be sporadically update as I see fit. I go through periodic bouts of activity in my hobby and am in no way consistent. It will include modeling, painting tactics, battle reports and fluff relating to my army. I am not claiming to be an expert in any of these fields, simply sharing my journey towards a fully finished army.

A little history may be required. My brother and I have been avid Warhammer Hobbyists since a very young age and we have spent years building up our respective forces. Our first tentative reaches into 40k came with my brother obtaining a second hand Blood Angels force. Complete with an extremely old dreadnought, my brother hit the field, guns blazing while I was still marshaling my Warhammer Fantasy Dwarf army. However, he soon tired of his devastators rushing across the field and clubbing terminators to death with the butt of their lascannons, so he scrapped the Blood Angels. Though I managed to save the dreadnought, now lovingly referred to as Eddy the Dready, most of that army is gone now. My brother would later replace it with a Imperial Guard army and eventually his ork infantry army.

<----- Old Eddy, saved from my brother's uncaring grasp, though his weapon has been lost! Its fun to use as it is generally older than many of the kids who ask what the hell it is.

It was my brother who gave me my final push over the edge into the abyssal descent into Chaos. One fateful day, he was off at an auction, an event to which I was unable to go. He won a box set of his choice. He chose the Chaos force and handed it off to me. It was assembled in no time and I was planning my army from then on. I had finally settled on an Iron Warrior army kitted out with a whole bunch of Missile Launchers when tragedy struck...GW changed the Chaos book in ways too horrible to comprehend (bitter much?). I had played all of one game against my brother's Guard army under those rules and I had to adjust my army list to fit this nerfed codex. The more I poured over the rules, however, the more I began to settle on a rough army list. By this time, my brother had shunted his guard army to the side and all but given up on his loyalist space marines. Knee deep in Ork boys, my brother always had a tale of his victory to impart to me each week. He regaled me with the exploits of his 'undefeated' 1000 point Ork army until finally I had no choice. Mustering a force that I had no confidence in, I brought them against my brother.We played two 1500 point annihilation missions. I had to totally eliminate his units. His core units, and he had three of them, were 30 boys each. And I won. Twice.

This of course, gave me a renewed vigour to finish my Chaos Space Marines. It also made me rethink the harsh tone with which I approached the revised rules. While I still mourn the loss of many of the old codex rules, I have confidence that a playable, fun army can be dredged out of the newest Chaos codex. With about 1 and a bit of my squads already painted, my immediate goal is to create an army list to fight side by side with my brother in a doubles tournament.

Stay tuned for pictures, fluff and MORE