Chaos Lord Umbri Zul

   I am 3 and a bit weeks into my marathon training block and I am finding free time has become a luxury that I am struggling to locate much of. Between the pressures of work, having kids and now pushing myself to run ridiculous distances weekly*, something had to give and the decision I have made was to drop wargaming for a bit.

   If I am being honest, a lot of my recent games had already felt a bit like a chore, and my continuous painting targets haven't helped on that front. So, I have stopped booking games for a bit to let everything die down, while I am also restricting my painting to only what I fancy, when I fancy. 

*I am one week away from weekly half marathons for fun . . .

   When the new Red Corsair range came out it included a Reaver Lord, a model I have picked up in the shops so many times it got ridiculous. With my what I want, when I want philosophy in place, I actually bought one and got started.

   During the late stages of the Heresy, I had fluff that the illustrious but often neglected, 523^rd Expeditionary fleet of the Sons of Horus, had failed their primarch one too many times and been severely punished. They already had the title of The Sacrificed Sons but their whole leadership cadre had been beheaded with their skulls covered in gold and displayed on the Vengeful Spirit as a warning to others.

   With a void to be filled, a sergeant rose to lead the, what was at this point, warband and has done until the present era of 40k, leading them away from the Sons of Horus legion and refusing to join the Black Legion. This man became Chaos Lord Umbri Zul.

   I have a model of this character that has been my chaos lord for the past few years, but I was never really that happy with him. This version uses the Reaver Lord as it's base with a few minor amendments.

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Test Slaaneshi

    After 11th edition warhammer 40k was announced my gaming group really picked up on excitement with various new projects being planned and figures being bought. I ended up with half a plan of an Emperor's Children Chaos army - starting with a White Dwarf Combat Patrol.

   I duly bought the marine elements of it as a test project to see if I even wanted to go further with this plan, and found I really enjoyed painting them*. Then I toyed for a few weeks about whether I should finish buying the last couple of units before becoming a bit illusioned with having to buy into a new edition.

*in far smaller batches than is normal for me

   I have since written a list that I do really want to get onto the table, but it is currently sitting in a pile of to buy stuff as I am trying not to spend any money for a while to focus on other things.

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Traitor Kasrkin

   Having lined up a couple of games in quick succession, I decided to use them to push myself into finishing more elements of a project that had fallen by the wayside - my traitor guard. I split the elements into NEED for a game and units I can proxy in the meantime but replace before the second game.

   The units I decided I needed were the Kasrkin and a Primaris Psyker. The Kasrkin were half painted, so that was a fairly easy thing to achieve with a few hours work, while the Primaris Psyker was a model from another project that was built and waiting for more models before I started the painting.

   I went with the traditional red unit for the Kasrkin, which was something I had avoided on purpose for my regular traitor guard. These guys it felt right for.

They have a painted unit icon of a bronze hand print - as I'm going to call these guys something like The Pacted.

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Chaos Heavy Weapons

Focus Project ; No

   As Operation Get Stuff Painted carries on, last week on my painting desk I had a couple of Chaos Space Marine units that had been sitting on a shelf patiently waiting their turn. Neither of these units has any real claim to being at the head of the queue beyond being within arms reach and having been built and sprayed already.

   The units are a pair of Obliterators that I picked up at a Bring and Buy show a year or so ago (I want to say Lee Valley?) and a unit of Chaos Havocs which came from the magazine and just missed their slot in the queue in favour of the fully lascannon unit that got a bit uppity.

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Atakam the Defiler

   Atakam the Defiler, his origins are obscure, dating back over 10,000 years but it seems he was a sergeant in the World Eaters' legion during the events of the Siege of Terra, quickly rising through the ranks with Khorne's favour in the years afterwards. Ultimately achieving Daemonhood on Chetis 4 during the Imperial invasion.

   The model is a Daemon Prince using the new version of the model. This is a rebuild of an old Daemon Prince I did over a decade ago that I was never really that happy with. The power claw arm is from an old resin Ghazghkull and took a bit of hacking to make fit, but it looks so good in person.

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Just So Angry

   While I've only been to the new club twice now and I'm not able to go for another few months, but the two games I have played have made me rethink how I am collecting some of my 40k armies. The games I've tended to play in the last couple of years have been fairly small - Combat Patrol or 1500 points or much less, while this club is playing the more 'standard' points limit of 2000 points. This has made me realise that quite a lot of my armies are just so small - normally pushing over 1000 points with a few that are 1500 - 1700, but that would be using the whole collection and not a thought out army.

   I've been writing a fair few lists for my two chaos armies - aiming to focus on a single area before I spread out too much into other projects. Which one became the army that had the money spent on it was the reason I hadn't spent any money, I just couldn't decide, until chatting to one of my mates about the two collections and I made a passing comment that I thought my World Eaters were my better painted army and that in time I'd like to go back and re-tidy my regular chaos. He suggested that I finish the army I think is better painted, so that I can happily play any games I'm offered, to give me time to go back to the other army.

   So I picked the list I thought would be the most fun (and cost the least) and bought a unit or two for it. At the same time as I'd made decision, my birthday came around and my brothers, unprompted, bought me a *model for that army too. So, I got painting.

*big big

   This post is the units I've finished for my World Eaters;

Berserker Surgeon - Master of Executions. I'm not a huge fan of the base model and seeing a lot of World Eaters players taking the full 3 allowed to buff squads just looks ridiculous, but the fluff keeps going on about how the World Eaters basically only still exist because they have a strong cadre of berserker surgeons and the Fabius Bile backpack I found in the box from Phil, really got me thinking.

By my reckoning, beside the base model and the backpack, there are at least 3 other kits on show here including parts from the berserker sprues.

I am incredibly pleased with this model.

My second Hell Brute - this one a bit more basic in terms of weapons - a pair of fists with flamers in each but I was pleased with how it came out.

A old spawn model I bought online as I need pairs of spawn to make a legal unit and I only had the single one. I will add a box to round out to four in the future.

Next up is a Slaughterbound HQ. This is the newest HQ model for this army and I knew I wanted one when they came out. I gave this guy light skin so that the other stuff on the model would pop.

An unit of Exalted Eightbound, which are the elite version of the Eightbound box. These guys are never seen in current lists as they currently aren't very good but I have a Slaughterbound which is the Eightbound version of a HQ, so I wanted his units available to me. Plus units in 40k might be terrible this month and great next month, so having them in my arsenal just makes sense.

The last unit for this batch is a second rhino for the army. This is another model that I made from Phil's box - the more bits of this I found as I went through the box , the more hopeful I was that I could build a whole one.

I tried to make this one look more like a fairly recently captured Imperial one rather than a historic vehicle from their armoury.

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Dark Angels? Really?

   This is a post slightly out of time, but I had been on a bit of a Chaos painting fix and was stuck between motivation, so I did the only sensible thing and pick a unit I knew I was going to need to force myself to start and do that instead.

   The unit I picked was my converted unit of Dark Angel Possessed for my Fallen Angel Combat Patrol. These were converted from a mix of the Possessed box and some MKiii marines to keep the period feel. After all the moaning going into painting them, once the skins were based and washed they felt really good, with everything following it just being, mostly, good fun.

   It's only taken me nearly a year to do the last unit of this combat patrol . . .

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2nd Edition Warhammer 40k?

   One of my old 30k podcast mates started playing Warhammer 40k in 2nd edition* and has a real nostalgia for that era that he can't quite shake. He's been talking about doing a 2nd edition project for a few months now, but finally took the plunge a couple of months back, buying up figures he would have used at the time, namely Space Wolves, and painting them in the style of the edition.

*compared to my 3rd edition beginnings 

   I'm someone who is always happy to look at a new project if it won't cost an absolute bomb and there is a decent chance it will get used, so I toyed with looking into doing something similar, settling on probably just building something a bit closer to 3rd edition and calling it quits.

   Until someone who reads this blog - Phil - messaged to say he had a box of old Warhammer to get rid of, did I want it? Looking through some of the photos, I saw 2nd Edition Chaos Space Marines and my creative juices started flowing.

   This post is about the first squad plus Aspiring Champion (separate unit) for this army. I've painted them in, what I think is, 2nd edition colours for the Black Legion - so more yellow and red than you'd see nowadays. I plan to go back over the army if I find any better pictures online, but my googlefu has slightly failed me on this one.

Thanks for reading and extra thanks to Phil

Astral Claws Scout Squad

   Is this another new project? Let me explain. 

   My old Heresy podcast group is a strange whatsapp chat where we can be completely silent for months and then we talk non-stop for a few weeks, spitballing ideas that rarely go anywhere. One idea I floated a few months back was of a meet up to play 5th edition Warhammer using the Badab War books from Forgewold. I've always wanted to play some games from this campaign but I've never had an opponent. 

   I'd worked out a 1000 point list, which was pretty normal for the time, worked out prices and was fairly surprised by how cheap the bulk of the project would be, barring two units - the dreadnought (I didn't want a venerable one and GW don't sell the old normal one anymore) and the scout squad.

   Then someone who reads this blog got in contact to say they were getting rid of their old warhammer bits and did I want them? Of course I said yes - thanks Phil! 

   I'm going to go into some of the stuff in the box properly in another post - as there is another whole new project I'm doing from this box, plus another half formed project in my head - but one thing that jumped out when I was sorting through the bits was the metal scouts.

   With excited cries, I ran to check my notebook and my 1000 point list and found I had all the scouts, plus extras, that I needed. So they duly got sprayed and put onto my painting desk - the project was go.

   I need to order some decals from my German supplier, but I'm really pleased to see this project starting up. I've got big plans even knowing that I don't expect this to ever see a table top. Sometimes it's nice to get ideas out of your head and be creative.

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The Anti-Angels

   Carrying on with getting units finished ahead of the game included my unit of converted Warp Talons. These guys were built years ago when I was getting games in against a guy who always played Blood Angels, so they were designed to look like the opposites to his angelic Sanguinary Guard. However, we never actually played with this army and the unit sat unpainted for years.

   Part of the issue was that I wasn't sure how to paint the wings. I went with obviously deamonic, red wings for the flying Lord, but with the squad I wanted them to look like unnatural growths, so that units that were actually deamonic kept the weird colours.

  The photo below shows the unit in the game - I quite liked how the Warp Talons really looked different to the unit you can same from the same kit.

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Dealing With Tanks

   I have another game lined up at the new club I have joined and while the vibe is completely different to any other club I've been at as an adult, being fairly competitive, it's nice to have a regular thing set in the calendar.

   The wargamer I was set to play is a big tank fan, with his armies being very vehicle heavy. While I didn't want to tailor an army to play him, I did need to up my anti-tank game, hence the lascannon armed Havoc squad below.

   This was a squad I always meant to add to my chaos army but had never quite justified buying, so when they came up in the Combat Patrol magazine, I grabbed two copies. The first was built as per the old Combat Patrol, this is the second* which was very much designed for a single job.

*but the only one I have painted so far . . .

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Red Butchers

   My World Eater project has stalled since the game at the Hutton Hearthguard, partly as I'd like to remove the daemon element I added to fill points and I can't decide what to do, and partly due to a plague of chickenpox affecting both boys while a bad cold took the adults out*.

*It was brutal

   While I am working out what my plan is, I decided to just paint the unit of Chaos Terminators that came in a recent Combat Patrol magazine up for this army, as it made more sense to give them a unit than my normal Chaos Marines**.

*I was hoping to buy more than one copy by I was told "a nice young man needed them for his online business"***

***so currently on eBay for 3x the price

  I've tried to make these guys match my regular berserkers and I suspect I should have broken up the red armour a touch more like I've done on my later World Eater models.

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Hammer and Rhino

   The last units needed for the game at the weekend were a Rhino transport (I probably need a few more in the future) and a Hellbrute. I'm a big fan of both models, I always like Rhino chassis and who doesn't like a dreadnought?

   I didn't buy the Rhino with an actual plan in mind of what it would carry, but  it was always likely to end up carrying the Eightbound unit and in game this is what it ended up doing, although, in the future it would be great to have one per Berserker unit. I tried to make it a bit more Khorne-y by putting a H Girder on the front to help balance as many skulls or useful helmets as I could find in my bits box*. I had meant to put more black panels on this to break the red up but remembered my plan by the time I was varnishing it**.

*next one I'll get the Battlefield Trophies next

**next time!

   The Hellbrute was bought one night sitting up with one of my children*** when I had this brilliant idea of what I wanted to do with one. I hadn't even thought beyond just having a Combat Patrol, so it was surprise the next morning when it dawned on me what I had done.

   I've added the chains pinned into it's arms to show that it is chained down when not in combat, a Khorne icon hanging from the waist from the Juggernaut sprues and added a trophy spike from the vehicle upgrade sprue as a good Khorne worshipper needs some skulls.

***I forget which at this point

   This post was meant to be posted on the day of the game, but I forgot, so I thought I would finish the post with a photo from the day instead, picking one that has both the units mentioned above in it. The Rhino didn't last long, so that was a tougher ask.

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Nuceria Calls

   The only thing I had to buy for the coming game was a single unit of World Eater Berserkers. There were a few ideas I had but, ultimately, I thought if I was buying anything with a deadline to paint, it should be some regular troops that might otherwise end up in my backlog and never get done. This was a brilliant plan, but a child coming down with Chickenpox really put a spanner into the works with the deadline looming.

   In the novel Angron, one of the characters that the novel follows is a traitor marine from a Blood Angel successor chapter (I forget which one) who has answered the call of Khorne and joined a World Eater warband, his whole motivation throughout the novel is that he is desperate to get the "nails" so he can really be one of them. When I bought my 3rd squad of berserkers I knew I wanted a small nod towards this, so I built one guy with a Blood Angel chain sword and Blood Angel'ly pad.

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Rebound By Eight?

   I've actually got a game lined up at a new club while I continue to wait for Wayland Games to open their new gaming space. The game is at a bigger points limit than I usually play at, but I'm not going to sniff at the chance to get some toys out.

   I have a couple of armies that I could break out that are either already at the 2000 point level or I could very easily get them to that level, however, I'm currently painting my World Eaters and I think it makes sense to use this as the kick up the bottom and get that army done.

   I've pulled every World Eater model I own into a list and worked out what the quickest way to 2000 points was without buying too much. This has turned out to be using the Khorne Daemons I already own to boost my numbers using the detachment that allows me to add them to my mortal army.

   This post is the first couple of units that I already owned that I've pushed up my to do list. A Lord on Juggernaught that was already a priority due to him being in my combat patrol, then the last 3 Eightbound that I bought to add to the unit I already have.

   The Juggernaught riding Lord, I tried to match his Juggernaught to the regular daemons barring the brass trim where I just like the new paint scheme so much more. If I had time to go back and tidy my daemons I would, but I don't today.

   The 3 Eightbound built and painted the same as the other 3 (full unit, next photo down), although I tried to swap backpacks and, I think, a weapon or two for some variety. I still really like these figures and there is a risk that if they do well next weekend, I might pick up the Eightbound character and a unit of the upgraded ones.

   I've got 3 units left to paint in the next week and have very little actual painting time, but I shall push as best I can!

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Blood Jakhals

   Jakhals are the World Eater version of regular Chaos Marines' Cultists, but jacked up on a weird blood based performance enhancing chemical as such I ignored the way GW painted their box art with black clothing and red details to make them look like the World Eater wannabies that they are. Ideally, I'd like to have a whole bunch of cultists between these guys and the regular ones that all look similar but also show where they come from.

   The real pity of this unit is they are a nightmare to build with lots of small wrist joints that don't make sense until you get them right and they are surprisingly busy and difficult to paint for a unit that is so cheap on the battlefield. I'd like to put 2 or 3 of these units on the board and be able to throw them away without caring but the motivation to paint that many would not be easy to find.

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Bound By Eight?

   I'm trying to focus on the figures from the World Eater combat patrol when I am painting this project but I had an unexpected bit of weekend painting time and wanted a project I could get the bulk of the way through before that time went away and I picked a 3 man unit, the Khorne Eightbound. These are effectively the World Eater version of regular Possessed Marines but with a bit more Khorne-y flavour.

   I have another box of these to build that were going to be their own unit, but I think I might use them to bulk this squad up instead.

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The Blood Calls

   As always I have a few projects I'm working on and they vary day to day in which I think is the priority, but my World Eater project is one of the ones that keeps annoying me that it isn't further along. I really enjoy looking at these figures but the trim is trying to break my tired mind, so I'm having to take breaks between batches.

   This is the second squad of regular berserkers and the last of them that I own*. I painted them the same as the first unit but I gave them slightly more black on their armour just for a bit of variety and to break the vast amount of red.

*although I think I'd like at least one more squad at some point

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The Red Angel Calls

   I went into this year not planning to do many/any(?) new projects but after a conversation with my brothers about their gaming plans for the year, both have expressed a desire for a cheap year in terms of playing a couple of different combat patrols but not building massive armies*. So while I am still going to try and get a couple of bigger games in at some point this year**, it has allowed me to muck about with other combat patrols slightly more guilt free.

*working on the theory buying a new combat patrol is a set price they can budget into their plans, while armies tend to be unpriceable and suffer from unplanned project creep

**if my gaming venue ever reopens

   The World Eaters were one of those combat patrols I had my eye on but probably wasn't going to push the button with until two things happened, 1. GW announced that the chaos daemon codex wasn't going to be a stand alone thing and that we'd get mixed daemon/mortal God books for them. 2. My brothers wanted to stay with Combat Patrols. This meant that I was going to end up buying the Khorne book anyway as my Khornate daemons are my biggest daemon army, so I might as well get the most use out of the book, plus its a combat patrol I can use against my brothers. Also, the patrol being three core units with sensible upgrades meant I had a solid basis for an army no matter what happened in the new codex.

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The Heraclean

   Every space marine legion in 30k has/had a named elite terminator unit of some sort which were seen as far more elite than even their regular terminator squads. For example these included such names as; the Blood Angel's Crimson Paladins, the Deathguard's Grave Wardens, the Nightlords had two being the Contekar and Atramentar, while the Sons of Horus had the Justaerin.

   I like the idea that, while my chaos space marine warband definitely doesn't include any Justaerin, they might have decided that their top tier unit would have a name, aping the legions of old. Hence the Heraclean were born.

   These guys are just the terminators of the warband, no more, no less, but they sit at the top of the promotion ladder for the regular troops of the army and that's an important thing to have.

   This is the first 5, I do have another 5 that I need to tidy up from an old army but they will be a bit more work.

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