“The daemonic are without number, and their legions span the galaxy. But faith does not tire. Should it take us an eternity, the Ordo Malleus will find and exterminate them all.”
– Lord Hephaestos Grudd

This is a bit of a back story to my current hobby situation. Yes I’m going to ramble, but you’ll get to the rest of the pictures eventually. Just hang in for a little while; I hope it’ll be worth it.

I’m going to be honest with you. I didn’t intend to get back into this hobby at all. In fact I hadn’t really thought about it since the day my friends all moved to university and I was left with nobody I knew to play against. I decided that the thought of trying to talk, let alone befriend some of the unwashed and socially inept life forms hanging around the local Games Workshop at the time was just too much to bear. So, everything went into my parents loft and that was that for the next 12 years while I tried to be anything but geeky. Then I bought a house…

My parents had “suggested” that now I had some space, perhaps I should clear all of my shit from their house and make some room. So as I was rummaging through the loft I inevitably came across my old (mostly unpainted) miniatures. I instantly went all misty eyed remembering making hills out of any polystyrene I could get my hands on and getting paint all over my bedroom carpet. So I went into the local GW about a week later and bought a box of Dark Angels veterans, because robes are awesome. My first love has always been Dark Angels and probably always will be. I’m not sure I can pinpoint exactly what it is about them, but I just love the broody dress wearing sods. Despite that, my Oath of Moment has nothing to do with Dark Angels at all. In fact the vet squad snowballed into about 3000pts worth which is still either unpainted, in bits or on the sprue apart from a lone tactical squad.

Because I didn’t have a clue how to play as 2nd edition was a long long time ago and I was waiting for the new Dark Angels codex to drop. I had the bright idea that it’d be great to collect another army to learn how to play the game. Something that I could get painted quickly for the tabletop, something with a low model count, something that I wasn’t too precious about and didn’t want to faff on with… a Grey Knight paladin army.

So that was about 2 years ago and now I’m sitting on the biggest pile of plastic I’ve seen outside of a Games Workshop store or my recycling bin. I’ve finished 14 models in that entire time, which are the aforementioned tactical squad, three servo skulls and a dreadknight that I finished last week. That’s not to say I haven’t made progress on other stuff, but I’m one of the most anal people I know and have nearly nothing to show as a result. I’ve watched more tutorials than I can count and put so little of it into practice as I’m too scared of mucking it all up so I procrastinate more. Anyway, here’s where I’m at so far.

I’ve got 5 terminators that are pretty much finished. I want to go back and redo the force weapons on these as I think I can probably do something better. They just look a little flat I think and I also need to do some highlighting on the silver. I’ve magnetised all of the weapons at the wrist and the heavy weapons are changeable at the both the shoulder and the gun, so I can use a psycannon or incinerator. Not sure I’ll bother with psilencers unless they are improved in a new codex. I do love magnets though.

Another 10 terminators, which need highlights, details and force weapons completed. Again they’re all magnetised along with more heavy weapon arms so I can run them as paladins if needed.

A strike squad/interceptor squad, which still need highlights, details and force weapons finishing. I’ve magnetised the backpacks, some arms and also the special weapons. I was slightly too lazy to sort out the other backpacks yet, but when I do then I can run these as either a 10 man strike or interceptor squad.

My dreadknight, the only finished model in the army and all round wrecker of faces. I’ve still got the sword and the other weapons to paint as they’re all magnetised. But I’m really proud of this one. As mentioned in our single figure challenge it’s the first time I got to try out a lot of new techniques from the Forgeworld Masterclass book.

I always wanted a land raider when I was young but was never able to save enough money for one. To me, they’re the iconic 40k tank and this has been a childhood dream come true so I can’t wait until it’s finished. The masked heraldry was fun to do and I need to add to it a bit more to make it pop. I’ll probably use a transfer instead of freehand as I don’t want to spoil the airbrush work when I have to tidy it up. I even painted the interior I was getting that into it, just a shame you can’t really see it once it’s all built.

My old school inquisitor in terminator armour and the conversion I’m working on to replace him. I painted the old one when I was about 15 so it’s nice to still use him, but he looks really out of place next to new terminators. I decided to build a new one mainly using GK terminator parts but with a standard thunder hammer arm, Chaos lord cloak, Dark Eldar head, part of Draigo’s back banner, a kitbashed psycannon and a fair bit of guitar string. I need to add some inquisition iconography on his right shoulder and then he’s ready for paint.

Aside from all of that I’ve got Draigo, Solomon Lok and a lot of magnetised weapons to paint. Though I’m not in a hurry to finish Draigo as yet as I think the paladin army has a bit of a limited playstyle, so he’ll probably be the last thing I finish. There’s another 15 power armoured GK still on the sprues with 10 of those earmarked for a purifier squad. I picked up Castellan Crowe and two Forgeworld GK dreadnoughts 2nd hand and stripped them a couple of weeks ago too. Hopefully next time I’ll be able to show some of these as let’s be honest, bare plastic and resin isn’t all that interesting really.

Personally that’s my drive to keep going, having a fully painted army to game with. Back when I was young I just used to collect whatever I thought looked cool and never had anywhere near enough for a full army. I used to play a lot of Bloodbowl as a result and even they were only undercoated black with an attempt at painting a Witch Elf. I’m determined that this time things are going to be different and I’ll get at least one army completed, if not more… I hope.