#thunderbearers

[gasha40k]

At long last! It’s been a while since my last post, although I’m sure I could probably start every post by saying that. Warhammer has taken a back-burner position in my life for the past few months. I haven’t played a game of 40k since October! If I’m honest, this is primarily because of money. I’ll spare everyone the rant and say that 40k’s prohibitively expensive nature has become, well, prohibiting, I guess. But that being said, the fixation always returns. And return it has! In the last however-many-months since my last post, I’ve spent most of my 40k time playing Kill Team and avoiding finishing my reading of Angron: The Red Angel, but I’ve done a little bit of fun stuff on the side that I’d like to share.

First time using colored primer went pretty well! Certainly saved me a lot of time and Mephiston Red paint

Angron is progressing! Since my last post I’ve primed him and most of his subassemblies. I’m painting him sort of in half, with his left arm and wing detached, as well as his bronze armor plating. I’m doing this so that I can get in and color the backsides of his wings properly.

This guy has been a big challenge so far. A model this large is both imposing and resource-intensive, and I’ve done literally no painting as of recent, so I’m likely not going to finish him for a long while, but I’m excited for when I eventually do.

Formerly known as Urayen’s Reavers, the Eclipse Cavaliers are a band of opportunistic Aeldari Corsairs who all seek one thing and one thing alone: profit

Moving on. As I mentioned previously, I started playing Kill Team this year, and I gotta say, KT fucking rocks! The rules are super approachable and the small scale of the game allows for much more focused and cinematic battles. It’s also a lot quicker, which makes it much easier to get pickup games in, which means I can actually play some 40k sometimes nowadays.

These xenos boys are known as the Eclipse Cavaliers. They’re a band of scumbag Corsairs and my squad of choice. I’ve written a lot of backstory for these boys so as to texture my games a bit more for myself, so I’m gonna put all that stuff in another post where I can talk about these characters in a bit more detail.

The 2nd Company is lead by the boisterous Captain Zaraf Gorfried Redfale. They specialize in the utilization of heavy war implements, such as Gravis armor, tanks, and artillery vehicles

Now that we’re onto more conceptual subject matter, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about how the Thunderbearers actually function as a Chapter. Each Company of the Thunderbearers controls a massive warfleet—much larger than the average fleet of most Successor Chapters—and acts as a semi-autonomous fighting force in and of itself, with the ability to prosecute independent campaigns so long as they remain aligned and in accordance with the Chapter as a whole. The 1st Company is functionally the “core” of the Chapter, made up of the Chapter’s command fleet, veteran company, and portions of the 10th.

The 2nd Company is technically the first of the Chapter’s autonomous fighting forces, and they’re also the only Company for which I own a Captain (the big Gravis fucker who I show off pretty often). The 2nd Company’s culture can largely be sourced to that of a feudal desert world known as Manticore. As the 2nd Company makes up a good amount of the Chapter’s infantry regiments, I felt it necessary to give them their own heraldry.

The special heraldry on their armor pays respect to Manticore in a few different ways. First and foremost, the red armor is a visual homage to the cold, crimson dunes that cover Manticore, but secondarily, it is a holdover tradition that comes from Manticoran warrior culture, wherein it was standard practice to color one’s armor with any number of red pigments so as to camouflage themselves in the dunes. Over time, different colorations of red grew to signify different things, with the 2nd Company’s crimson and gold coming to represent wealth and nobility.

I think that having a squad or two with a splash of red will really make my Space Marines pop out a little bit, and will definitely add some variation into my annoyingly uniform army. I’m thinking of doing little streaks of red on a few of the vehicles, as well, which will make them stand out too.

Speaking of vehicles, the Thunderbearers have received some reinforcements!

This is a Ballistus Dreadnought that I got my hands on through a friend of mine who was selling his Astartes. I kitbashed him a little but tried not to overdo it with the baubles, since my Redemptor is a bit of a piece. Design-wise, I tried to make this a sort of “Primaris update” of one of my first models, Big Harold.

The Aurum Eternatus, one of the Chapter’s most sanctified relics, is a Venerable Dreadnought whose chassis contains the body of the previous fallen Chapter-Master

The thing that I like the most about the Venerable Dreadnought is the ornate look to it. It’s got a lot of trim and fancy panels everywhere and kind of looks like a church-mech.

This aesthetic choice is most noticeable in the lascannon, in my opinion. Combined with the gold trim, the cool indented archway designs on the side panel of the las sorta gives “Gothic castle wall.”

While I couldn’t really replicate the trim, I did use a bunch of bits from the Venerable Dreadnought kit to up the Gothic factor. There’s also a noticeable lack of purity seals on Big Harold, which was something that I absolutely had to remedy. There’s 7 seals! Now we’ve got a proper 7-times blessed Primaris-scale lascannon to snipe tanks with.

Harold has sort of fallen out of use in my lists recently because, uh, Venerable Dreadnoughts do not exist anymore. Awesome! The older Dreads just aren’t as good as Redemptors as well, so Harold has sort of retired to a more ritualistic position on the Chapter.

In his stead, though, we’ve got quite a few new additions to the army alongside our Ballistus. Not included here is another drop pod and a bunch of new infantry units.

Sternguard Veterans of the Thunderbearers 1st Company

Here’s one of ‘em! This is my first squad of Sternguard Veterans, but I’m in the process of building another. Like the Ballistus, these dudes are as of yet unnamed, but I like them quite a bit! To be critical, though, I think I overdid it with some of the bits, but I’m sure the silhouettes will look less obnoxious once they’re all painted and voluminous.

My favorite of the bunch is probably the Veteran Sergeant. His heroic pose and classic bits give “default Space Marine.” And the Veteran on the left is using a bit of a unique shoulder pad that may or may not be a cleansed and sanctified Chaos relic, which may or may not be a common practice in the Thunderbearers Reclusiam Cataegis.

Next post will include the Eclipse Cavaliers and a new Thunderbearers character guy.

[gasha40k]

Recently I’ve been trying to focus on getting through my incomprehensibly massive amount of unpainted models, so here’s another quick little painting update.

Missile launcher bro thinks he’s part of the team meanwhile it’s a completely illegal model

Our first little squad of Berzerkers is coming into shape! I’ve got a bit more painting to do before this squad is done, but everyone’s got their trim, at the very least. Most of them also have red, which, when combined with the brass trim and the black primer, technically counts as battle-ready, since it is 3 different colors. Does this mean I can put them on the tabletop and play with them? Not without feeling ashamed of myself for never painting, no!

Brother Kardon the Eternal, veteran of the Long War, possibly over 10,000 years old. So old and presumably powerful that he could easily be a Chaos Lord if he wanted to, but is so dedicated to killing at all times that he can’t be fucked to actually lead anything

Wally is one of my better minis, I think. He’s a tame but distinct kitbash and a fun way to pay homage to the ugly ass past of the World Eaters. He’s also one of the better painted models that I own. This, I think, is for two reasons: I changed how I use washes, and I started thinning my paints more.

Firstly, I finally ditched the fucking Nuln Oil. The new formula is garbage and doesn’t look good on anything except for metal. Deeply disappointing! But being left with no go-to wash left me wanting, so I’ve made the switch to Agrax Earthshade. Agrax Earthshade is magic. With almost every one of my models, I’ve been finishing their base colors and then promptly slathering them in mildly thinned Agrax Earthshade. Once it dries and stains the mini, I take a small amount of the base color and fill in the broader surfaces, brightening them and cleaning up messier spots where the wash had dried. This makes the recesses a lot darker while maintaining the cleaner look on the armor panels, and that contrast generates a very serviceable illusion of depth without having to bother with highlights.

You can also experience a glow up like this, all you need is a cape, trust me

Color-wise, I tried to paint Kardon as close as close possible to the original Wally model. For example, his Mark of Khorne belt buckle (that’s cute) is brass and his belt is red, just like the old model. His backpack is mostly red, with the… wing-connector thingies being brass. And while it’s hard to see in the reference image, Wally’s right kneepad has a silver Mark of Khorne on it. Kardon noticeably lacks kneepads, having a MK6 torso and legs. To maintain that cool little splash of silver, I moved it onto the Khornate emblem that Kardon uses to pin his cloak to his shoulders. Most of that shit is meaningless, I just felt like talking about my decisions because I thought they were cool if I’m real.

The Raijin’s targets rarely foresee the Interceptor’s attacks as it stalks its prey from low orbit before diving from the highest heavens to strike. Once its locked in, it moves so swiftly that quarry aware enough to catch a glimpse of the plane see nothing more than a few red falling stars before they’re annihilated.

Anyways, enough about Kardon and his friends. Here’s an update on my Interceptor. This thing has taken so much goddamn paint and, frankly, doesn’t look super great, but once I’m done brightening and highlighting the panels, I think it’ll look great. I think the golden guns are really good and funny, because that’s so unnecessary, they’re fucking aircraft guns. It feels very 40k, like, of course they’d make their plane guns golden. I’m really satisfied with the Raijin, as well, and I wish aircraft were better so I could actually use it.

As a closing thought, I’d love to, one day, do a big ass 4000pts game with a full aircraft layer transpiring. Multiple gunships and Interceptors dogfighting, occasionally dipping from the chaos in the sky to raze the surface with earthshaking strafing runs. Would be cool.

[gasha40k]

I’ve been reading a lot of 40k fiction in between painting recently, and I’ve gotten a good bit of progress done on both. I’ll start with a little reading update.

Horus Rising

False Gods

Galaxy in Flames

Flight of the Eisenstein

Fulgrim

First Heretic

Know No Fear

Butcher’s Nails

Betrayer

Wrath of Khârn

Khârn: Eightfold Path

I finished Betrayer just a couple days ago, and holy shit. What an incredible book. I am a strong Khârn stan (Argel Tal, too) and I am more convinced than ever that I’m a World Eaters gamer.

I plan to read the three (or four) Unremembered Empire books before I loop back to A Thousand Sons to read the “main” Heresy storyline through to Slaves to Darkness, and eventually Siege of Terra. But for now, I’m making a little detour through all of the books that Khârn takes center stage for, so that I can satiate the hyperfixation and figure out what he’s up to in the 42nd Millennium. I also plan to finish most of the World Eaters books, as that was the whole reason that I started reading the Heresy in the first place.

Betrayer is by far my favorite Warhammer novel. Fulgrim was my top for a while—I may be a closeted Emperor’s Children enjoyer, don’t tell Blood Daddy—but man. Betrayer blew it out of the fucking water. What an incredible ending to an incredible trilogy. My biggest takeaways were as follows: nobody fucking likes Angron, and Khârn is my favorite guy ever. Enough gushing, though. Time for painting stuff.

The second Ultramarine I’ve ever painted, weirdly enough. My first Ultramarine was my first model, so my second being a keychain-corpse for a new army is weirdly sentimental

Since we’re on the topic of Khorne, I finished up the torso of my old school Daemon Prince. I’m exceptionally proud of this! I think the shading and blending is maybe some of my best, most advanced painting yet, and I pulled out just about every technique that I know for this thing. I even did a little drybrushing on the Necron skull. Here’s to hoping I can maintain this level of quality across the other pieces of this mini once I get some more primer.

Getting some good use out of my technicals, and finally utilizing my skull box

Still on Khorne, here’s some more progress on those Bloodletters from last post. They’re just about done, complete with horn blending and everything. I’m planning on doing flaming blades for them, but I’ll have to buy some more paints before I tackle that. I’ve got a handful more of primed and based Bloodletters, so they’ll probably be my backup easy paint for a while. The bases are simple and easy to make, but decently visually effective, which I think is good and fitting for such a massed unit.

Next up, I decided to give highlighting a go with one of my newer Thunderbearers, since I’m trying to boost my painting technique all around. This is definitely my best highlighting work yet, certainly leagues ahead of my first try from last year. I think he looks pretty clean!

I’m also experimenting with new photography backgrounds since I got kinda sick of having pasta or hamster cage cleaner or whatever the fuck in the background of my poorly lit update pictures. Think I may have stumbled upon a good method for backgrounds.

I love you, empty white void

Last but certainly not least, I finished up the first bike for my lone Outrider Squad. I’m really happy with him, as well. The hardest part of painting these dudes is definitely base painting. They just have a lot of ground to cover with your brush so they absolutely devour paint, but it’s cool cause I finally finished him up after like, actual months of sitting half-painted in my vehicles box. I’m a particular fan of the little white lens glare in the top left of his eye. I just think it’s neat.

This unit is gonna be mad satisfying to finish, and I can’t wait to get more work done. In the meantime, I’m chugging away at my first 5-man Berzerker squad, including their bases, which are gonna be pretty unique. They’re like, black mountainous rocks littered with skulls and blood-stained snow. Alongside that, I’ve also been stripping my Custodes, so I’ll have a bit of an update about that next time, too.

[gasha40k]

Objective markers are something I haven’t really put much effort into as of yet, but I have a decently long list of cool, thematic objective markers that I’d like to make for my armies. For example, at some point I’m going to make a Khornate objective marker out of an Ork or a Guardsmen that’s been turned into a statue of brass and bone, as a reference to the Tartora incident in described Codex: Chaos Daemons.

Who could he have been? The MK3 armor raises a lot of questions!

Here’s my first finished objective marker for the Thunderbearers. A dead Space Marine is an all-time classic, whether it be for various secondaries or for the Crusade Agenda that requires Apothecary units to recover lost geneseed.

Having experienced a very recent disaster that both totally scattered and nearly eradicated the Chapter, there’s plenty of lost and otherwise damned Thunderbearers out there in the galaxy for the Apothecarion to recover. This marker also brings to light a dilemma that the Chapter has been facing for centuries now: the fact that, as a Chapter, the Thunderbearers are kind of innately unsustainable.

Inconspicuous banger filler image

Being a fleet-based Chapter, each Thunderbearers Company operates almost completely independently from one another, being separate entities containing their own fleet, support systems, and sects of Chapter command. Think like a much more toned down version of the Black Templars organizational structure. There are only ever 10 Companies, in accordance with the Codex Astartes, but due to their heavily decentralized nature, each Company contains a varying number of men at varying points in time, with some having many more Astartes (or many less) than others. Thunderbearers can also transfer between Companies depending on numerous factors, whether it be command convenience, skillset, training, or personality.

This is all well and good, but between the Ferric Delirium spreading en masse amongst Primaris reinforcements, the scattered nature of the Chapter’s command structure, and the scarcity of dedicated recruiting worlds, Chapter casualties are both high, and difficult to track. This means that casualties are scattered all across the galaxy, and geneseed is in high demand, so the Apothecarion certainly has its work cut out for it.

Moving on, the Calthradia Crusade is reaching a fever pitch. While the Inquisitor speeds towards a derelict orbital beacon, escorted by the Cobalt Lancers, the Necrons and T’au make a midnight strike at the Inquisitorial blacksite that holds the moon fragment.

The Vior’la Sept successfully wrests control of the fragment, but it may be too late, as daemons have begun appearing across the planet, and the relic of the moon begins to stir.

It’s been well over a year since my friends and I started this campaign, and with the arrival of 10th Edition right around the corner, it’s almost time for the Calthradia Crusade to come to a close. There’s only two more missions before it’s over. I’ll make sure to document how the narrative ends, but it’s been a long time coming, and I’m very excited to see how it concludes.

Now that we’re talking about 10th, I’m very excited about the new edition. One of the biggest reasons that I’ve not played 40k as much as I’d like to is because a normal 1k game takes around 4 hours, and I work full time. I ain’t got time for that shit dude. If 10th significantly cuts on game time, as GW preaches it will, I get the feeling that I’ll be a lot more active in the hobby.

Regarding Space Marines, I’m very, very pleased with the new changes. The new Army Rule, Oath of Moment, looks incredibly strong and super fitting to how a Space Marine force should be fighting: highly elite targeted spearhead assaults. This’ll be great for Thunderbearers, because I’ll be able to deepstrike Drop Pods full of ballistics right next to marked units. 

Moreover, the new bolt rifle profile means that the Thunderbearers will maintain their breakneck assault speed. Since Assault weapons no longer inflict a -1 to hit penalty on Advancing units, the Rapid Assault Chapter Tactic is completely unnecessary. The Heavy profile similarly no longer inflicts a -1 to hit, which means they’ll be able to quickly get into position and hunker down with a storm of highly bolter fire.

I’d also just accepted that the Devastators and Drop Pods strategy was miserably invalid when they revealed that the Primaris and Firstborn divide is all but dissipating, what with Primaris and Firstborn units being able to share transports. I’m gonna have to buy a couple more Pods, and a lot more Devastators.

In conclusion, the new edition is looking really, really fun. Each army only having 6 stratagems, alongside the game’s core strats, is another huge change that I’m excited for. Remembering stratagems was horribly difficult for me, and cutting them down will make mastering armies much easier. I’m looking forwards to Astartes being broken good for a few months. It’s been a long while since Codex Space Marines have been viable.

[gasha40k]

The last post was supposed to be a lot longer, but it got cut off because Tumblr is made of rocks. I’ve got a bit more to share, starting with a little bit of progress on World Eaters.

Finally got my hands on this guy again. I only need two more models to finish my World Eaters character collection: Azrakh the Annihilator and Angron. I also saved the Juggernaut body from my first Invocatus so soon I’ll have a Lord on Juggernaut as well

The fluff behind Lord Invocatus is so excessively metal that I can’t help but love it. The mental image of Avocado here galloping across the sky on a bridge of smoke and flame is one of the most raw things I think I am capable of imaging. That being said, the model is, like, very disappointingly not on fire, even if it’s still a banger model. I felt that this was a horribly missed opportunity, so I went about and built a reposed Invocatus with an added 3D fire effect from Deadly Print Studios to represent the bridge of flames. I’m really happy with this! Not only does the repose make him look larger and more ferocious, but the fire makes him look like the centerpiece that he should be, and the visual of him and his Juggernaut leaping over a plume of flame is sure to strike fear into the hearts of whoever I field him against. Or he’ll be the biggest target on the board because of his posing, and he’ll get shot and killed immediately. We’ll find out!

In the time since my last post, I’ve also come into possession of a few new neat 3D printed models for some little projects of mine, courtesy of an Ork-playing friend. This guy here is Tyrant Siege Terminator from the Iron Warriors Legion, the Chaos Legion that my Thunderbearers claim their heritage from (not that they’d know this, though).

Making that objective marker from a few posts ago was really fun, so I made some more ideas for custom ones to use with my factions. While I don’t exactly have a plan of action regarding this guy here, I do know that I’m going to turn him into some kind of relic recovery marker. A supremely apocryphal Chapter artifact of the highest sanctity, for the eyes of the most elite Thunderbearers only. An echo from a forgotten past, a powerless demigod from a lost era, frozen in time and waiting for 10,000 years. This’ll eventually be painted in Thunderbearers regalia and draped with either creeping vines and wild overgrowth, or dust, cobwebs, and rubble. Despite its heraldry, however, this ancient armor is still noticeably a Terminator pattern utilized almost exclusively by the Iron Warriors Traitor Legion. This implies that whichever venerable forebear originally adorned this armor would’ve either been a Battle-Brother of the Chapter’s earliest shrouded histories, or a later Astartes of such grand renown that he inherited what would’ve undoubtedly been one of the Chapter’s most valuable artifacts. Regardless, it’s a neat looking piece and not something that people will glean from first glance. It’s like a little Chapter Easter egg basically for me only, and that’s cool cuz it’s my army. <3

This beefy boy will be the subject of another objective marker. After a page describing each of the Chaos Gods, 9th Edition’s Codex: Chaos Daemons includes a two-page spread detailing anecdotes about various Daemon Worlds and how exactly they’d fallen to the Gods. The above excerpt from the Khornate incursion on a Daemon World named Tartora struck me as particularly visually poignant, so this boisterous Ork is gonna get turned into a statue of brass and bone. I’ll decorate his base with various skulls and lots and lots of blood. Maybe fire, too. I think a sort of glowing red vein effect on the base might be pretty cool. I’ll use him primarily with my World Eaters. Combined with a classic skull tower that I’m gonna make at some point, that means I’ll have two objective markers for both of my armies.

Moving on, I’ve been painting my dudes in what I believe to be their final color scheme for a good long while now. I’ve even started putting transfers on some of them as of a couple loads ago. That being said, I noticed that my most up-to-date heraldry sheet was kind of total garbage, and it didn’t represent the current look of the army whatsoever. This new heraldry sheet will be my (almost) final one; the colors are all correct, the helmets are all correct, and the Chapter icon has been edited and finalized. I may change the symbol signifying Chapter Honor Guard to be a set of tilted black stripes, sorts like hazard stripes but with the yellow replaced by Wraithbone. This could be another subtle nod to the Iron Warriors heritage as black stripes are a very common pattern, which means it could rationally be either an ambiguous heraldry of visually pleasing design, or iconography from culture that’s evolved slowly over the course of 10,000 years.

On the gameplay front, I recently played my first and likely final game of Strike Force in 9th with my brother. To send out 9th and usher in 10th, the Thunderbearers and Cobalt Lancers got together again for a good old fashioned “full-scale combat simulation.” They definitely used tracer rounds or something.

Most of my games are pretty standard but this one was great fun. We had very similar army compositions, with differences only in some key areas, like armor and HQ choice. The plan for us both was to forward deploy Infiltrator squads to hunker down on objectives, since we both took our Chapter-specific action secondaries. The mission we rolled, however, had better plans, and disabled setup rules in No Man’s Land, effectively making the Phobos forward deploy completely useless. It was a really even game, likely my favorite I’ve played so far, and I realize now after playing it that 2000pts is definitely the way that 40k is meant to be played. There were a lot of cool moments, too, and I think that was mostly facilitated by the higher point limit.

A Redemptor, an Aggressor Squad, an Eversor Assassin, and a Primaris Techmarine walk into a bar.

One of those cool moments was a chain of events that I’ll remember for a good long while. After my Predator las-sniped an enemy Redemptor, my own Redemptor stomped up to join two Space Marine columns locked in combat. After some intense combat, the Dreadnought was felled, surprisingly setting of an explosion, dealing mortals to literally everyone in the circle. The Techmarine takes the opportunity to kill the Eversor after this, who then explodes, killing the Techmarine. Earlier in the game, an Impulsor had exploded, and if I recall correctly, Big Harold exploded, bringing the game’s total explosion count to around 4 or 5. Fun!

My brother beat me on objectives, 26-40. He played his primaries far better than I did, and I was far too focused on killing his scary shit to properly run my secondaries. While I took out his Repulsor—the centerpiece of any good Cobalt Lancers army—during the game’s first BR, which significantly lessened his firepower and freed me up to move, aggressive pushes with his Impulsor and excellent positioning of his squads kept me at bay and I lost the inevitable Astartes vs. Astartes battle of attrition.

I hope that I can play some more 2000pts games here soon. I got my hands on a copy of the new Core Rulebook, so I’ll be hopefully be dipping my toes into the future of the 42nd millennium here soon. I’ve got some friends who wanna get back into the game with 10th, so I’ll be getting a couple Combat Patrol games in as well. Maybe Calthradia will follow into 10th, but the Crusade has been on hold for months now and I’m undergoing some significant life changes at the moment, so I doubt I’ll be making much consistent progress for a while.

[gasha40k]

As stated in my last post, World Eaters have occupied the vast majority of both my 40k time and my 40k energy for a number of months now. I’m even planning on joining a local league with my Khorne army, which I suppose means they’ve usurped the Thunderbearers as my “main” army, even though I love all of my tiny plastic sons equally. But regardless of the fact that they’re not exactly my primary army, the Thunderbearers are still my little men. The World Eaters may be my favorite faction, but they’re not my fully custom homebrewed little men that I’ve been collecting, customizing, and writing for years now.

I think it’s a good time to start working on my Astartes again. GW has been releasing a lot of banger kits recently, and since the turn of the edition, my drop pod strats have been more viable than ever. I’ve got some plans for the army going forwards, so I wanna talk about some of those here.

The new Company Heroes box is one of my favorite Primaris kits ever released. Each one of these sculpts fucking rocks, but I’m particularly interested the two decked out Veterans. Even more particularly the dude with the heavy bolter. Thing is, the actual datasheet attached to the kit is kind of mid, so instead of actually using the squad, I’m gonna cannibalize the kit for bits.

The Captain and the Ancient will be used as their solo datasheets. Not sure what I’ll do with the Champion, but I’m thinking I’ll use him to build a Librarian. The two veterans, however, are both gonna get recycled into Captain models.

Zaraf Görefried “the Red Roar” Redfale, Lord-Captain of the 2nd Company, forgotten prince of Manticore

Each Thunderbearers Company is a semi-autonomous armada, a vast independent warfleet of such concentrated force that it resembles a microcosmic Chapter in and of itself, albeit one with incredibly diminished numbers.

Due to their high levels of operational freedom, each Thunderbearers Company contains unique cultures and subtle variances of the Chapter’s doctrines. As such, those leading the Companies—the Captains, known interchangeably as Lords—are the greatest paragons of their fleet, representing most succinctly in both character and action the ideals of their individual Company.

Because of this, I’m trying to kitbash an interesting and characterful model for each Captain. Their model should tell a tale about them as an individual, but it should also be the clearest visual representation of their Company’s tactics and culture.

Perseus Lahan, “the Thunder Hand,” Lord-Captain of the 3rd Company

So going back to the Company Heroes, the robot lad is going to get converted into Perseus Lahan, the 3rd Captain. Perseus is known as “the Thunder Hand” not only for his sick ass gilded golden arm, but for his ruthlessly efficient decision-making and his finely honed (yet seemingly endless) temper.

This model is a pretty simple conversion, but super effective as a Captain, I think. I may also replace the circular thang on his power pack with a better iron halo, but I’ll get there when I get there.

Lazarus Sicane, “the White Wind,” Chapter-Master of the Thunderbearers and herald of the great storm

Heavy bolter guy gets better treatment than the robot arm guy though, of course. He’s gonna get converted into my Chapter-Master.

This will be Lazarus Sicane, the savior of the Chapter. He wields Exaction, an ancient, hyper-artificed bolt cannon that may or may not contain a dominated Warp entity. Lazarus is responsible for a lot of things in the Thunderbearers canon, including but not limited to reunifying the decimated Chapter after the opening of the Great Rift. He is, for all intents and purposes, the Chapter’s greatest hope, and one behind which all of its fleets rally.

I’m really excited to get this guy built because he’s kind of the quintessential Thunderbearers model. Old mark armor, lots of robes, gothic shit all over, a gargantuan ballistic cannon, and a metric fuckton of purity seals. He’ll also be super cool for narrative purposes, and definitely a bit of a centerpiece model.

Accompanying him will be a squad of Terminators, the Storm Guard, whenever I pick up a squad of those.

2nd Company Specialist test color scheme, courtesy of a friend

Since Companies are their own autonomous things, it makes sense for them to have their own heraldry, as well. To add some visual variety to my army, I’ve decided that a few of my dudes (specifically my Gravis units) are gonna get some red coloring to denote them as members of the 2nd Company.

The 2nd Company has a large quantity of recruits sourced from the world Manticore, which is a big hostile ball of frozen red sands. The red ceramite is an homage to the red-colored armor that warriors would wear as camouflage in the sand dunes.

I’m not entirely decided upon what color scheme to run with. The red helmet and red shoulder pad are cool, I think, but a red helmet and a red weapon may also work just as well. I’ll do some coloring tests to decide on what works best, but that’s about all I’ve got regarding loreposting and planning for my Space Marines. Outside of the Company Heroes, I’m gonna grab a Gladiator Lancer at some point, as well as an Impulsor. Gotta get my armor up.

[gasha40k]

Progress on painting up my Thunderbearers army continues slowly and steadily! I’ve been getting sick of painting infantry models, and my Interceptor has been primed for months and months, so I thought I’d take the plunge and actually paint a vehicle for once.

The ‘Raijin,’ an antique Interceptor found by Brother-Pilot Mercúr, who was consequently the only Astartes who could quell the Interceptor’s raging machine-spirit

This is a big work in progress, but I’m definitely liking how it’s turning out. Unless Dreadnoughts count (Dreadnoughts don’t count), then this is the first proper vehicle that I’ve ever painted. It’s a lot different to painting men! You need a lot more paint and a lot more coverage, but it’s been a fun break from dudes. I’ll post more of him when I’m actually done, but for now, this is where the ‘Raijin’ sits.

On the Chaos front, the first step towards my goal of collecting all of the named World Eaters characters begins with Khârn. He was super easily to build, but the skulls were a huge pain in the ass. I’m not really sure how I should base him, but the skulls were a good start, I think. I have a few ways to go from there.

I could fill the rest of the base with skulls and have it mirror that of my Khorne Bloodmaster, but that strikes me as kind of bland, and I’m not sure how well the skulls would fit inside that exterior ring.

I could also cut a bunch of skulls in half, glue them to the bottom of the base, and then submerge them in blood to make a sort of… skull bowl? It’d look very Khornate and neat, but would be a lot of effort, and I think the dimensions of the base would look weird.

I could do sand dunes inside of the skull ring, having the sand spilling over a bit, and he’d theoretically fit the rest of my army, but that feels like I’m not really doing Khârn justice.

What I think I’ll do is fill the ring with dirt, snow, skulls, and blood, to represent the frozen night of Skalathrax, where Khârn broke the legion. Maybe I’ll throw in a busted, bloodied World Eaters helmet to really seal the deal. Maybe I’ll even put a skull inside it. We’ll see!

[gasha40k]

Currently a massive heatwave in my city and it’s slowly boiling me to death in my apartment like an unaware frog, so I decided it’d be a good time to distract myself by getting some tertiary work done on some lads.

From left to right: Kardon the Eternal, Lord Akselos, and some unnamed guy with a big ass axe

Starting with the most boring stuff, my World Eaters character goon squad is all primed and ready to be painted. Once I’m done assembling this army I’m gonna paint these three guys first because they’re the coolest, by far. I’m still mad proud of Akselos’ model and I’m super excited to see how he’ll look on the tabletop when he’s all shiny and colorful.

Epic unusable Chaos model, thank you GW

Speaking of painting World Eaters, here’s a CSM Legionarie that I whipped up a while back as a color test for my World Eaters army. The whole goal with my Khorne fellas is to keep them as default as possible, so the color scheme is very simple and coherent.

On this particular mini, I wanted to maximize my usage of Mephiston Red, which is exemplified most particularly on the rocket launcher, which I’d usually paint with Abaddon Black. I think that it being red, though, gives it a sort of retro feel, which I quite like. This may be one of the better single minis I’ve made, as well. No highlights or anything, but some decent, clean coloring, and a lot of Agrax Earthshade.

I have, however, been doing some highlighting on Lieutenant Sadrian’s model. I’ve also been cleaning him up periodically, coloring over little mistakes and trying to make his model really pop. He’s almost definitely the centerpiece of my Thunderbearers army now.

Check out how regal and leaderly he looks amongst his men. What a tactician!

Sadrian is one of the few models that I haven’t repainted in Skavenblight Dinge, alongside Big Harold, the Venerable Dreadnought that I’ve had since I started the hobby. They’ve both more than earned their stripes on the tabletop, having been in nearly every game I’ve played in the last two or so years, and I figured their paint jobs were pretty serviceable, so a repaint would be unnecessary.

While Sadrian is an elite taxtician that routinely exercises unmatched intellect and complex battlefield knowledge, he is also a by-the-books, reliable warrior and a ruthless marksman, hence the simplicity of the inscription upon his trusty bolt rifle

But to make him stand out more as an HQ, I added some minor highlights to his armor, particularly on his arms and helmet. I also highlighted much of his gun and did some detailing on the purity seals and red tassels. I’m very satisfied with the inscription on his gun. It’s crazy to me that I was able to write a word that small and, uh, have it be actually legible.

Every single painted Astartes model that I own. For context I have nearly 3k points of these fuckers and only 10 finished minis

I’ve painted a good handful of Thunderbearers Intercessors since my last post. Nearly a full 10-man squad, now. Sadrian definitely stands out, and I think that, when contrasted with the leagues of men that he commands, eyes are naturally drawn to him. I’ll never get over how satisfying seeing a cohesively painted army is to my weird brain.

I am so fucking in love with this model and I do not know why, although I figure it’s got something to do with its appearance in Dawn of War

In other news, I’ve got one of these disgusting classic Daemon Princes coming in the mail. GW recently did a made-to-order run of this model, and I’ve been trying to hunt an inexpensive one down for actual months. He’ll be a staple of my WE army whenever I get my hands on him, although I am kind of terrified as painting it.

I’ve just about run out of image slots on tumblr, so I’ll post a bit more about my Crusade (and some thoughts on 10th edition) next post.