31st Hervictus Artillery

   Like my Traitor Imperial Guard combat patrol, my Hervictus guard also needed the requisite artillery pieces, but I found these harder to do, which is why they were put off for so long. My traitors could just have converted crew that came with the guns, they don't have a real uniform anyway, so a slight variation on the gun crew was no big deal. My Hervictus guard use Steel Legion bodies, which just didn't come close to the supplied crew.

   I had a couple of plans of either using regular Steel Legion figures posed around the guns to represent a crew maybe grabbing their small arms but I wasn't convinced when I tested it on the kit I bought for my traitors. My second plan was just to assume there wasn't a Hervictus artillery regiment, so the guns would be supplied by somewhere else*, but I thought it would just look odd on my main Imperial Guard army.

*which is something I plan to do with the other regiments I have in my head

   Then I found someone in Poland selling 3d prints of Steel Legion gun crew, designed for this kit and I was sold. Until I saw the postage costs and I put it off until I just couldn't think of a better plan.

   The markings on the front of the guns show the regimental badge, the regiment number and the platoon colour and gun position, so both the guns are from different platoon**, but hold the same position in their platoon (e.g.yellow might be platoon 1, with white showing gun 1 in that platoon).

**allowing me to expand in the future and have batteries for bigger games

I really fancy another 4 of these now. Oh and a command squad for these?

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The Dark Angels

   My second ever army for 40k was a fallen Dark Angel army using Chaos Space Marines (they were also all dedicated to Slaanesh but that's a different story). I keep starting a fallen Angel squad for my current Chaos Marines but mostly I can't decide what I'm trying to achieve with them - are they a Slaaneshi squad, or a regular marine squad, should they have Noise Marine guns?

   Then I had a thought - why not do a separate Fallen Angel Combat Patrol? Using the Chaos Marine rules (as they will be fighting on the Chaos side anyway) all I needed was a 10 man tactical squad, a Master of Possession, 5 Possessed and 10 Cultists.

   My head canon for this army is that they are Dark Angels from Luther's side on Caliban swept into the void when the planet fell. The Chaplain is a 30k Chaplain, so not the religious nut jobs of 40k but moral leaders whose job is the mental health of marines - if a marine is faltering its their job to fix them. So, 15 lost marines are looking to their Chaplain to explain why their father attacked them and where they now are - except he doesn't have an answer to hand. Then at some point a voice starts giving him answers and leading them to supplies, which is seen as some sort of miracle, however, little does he know but he's being set up by a daemon. As the corruption spreads his men are blind to it, even when the voice explains there is something he can do that would make his men even stronger.

The Chaplain/Master of Possession 

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A Red Sun Rises?

   Painting time has been nearly non-existent over the past couple of weeks but a unit that missed this blog are 10 Khorne Bloodletters that I bought from a second hand model shop in Norfolk to bulk up my Khorne Daemon numbers.

   It was only after I had sprayed them (as I bought them built) that I noticed I had 3 horn blowers, but as I went without any upgrades on the other 3 units I have, this shouldn't be an issue*. Otherwise, they were painted to match the rest of my Khorne Daemons and have been mixed into the box with the rest since this photo.

*although barely any of the rest of this army has made it onto the blog for some reason?

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Bring The Fire

   Carrying on with the models needed for a second Space Marine combat patrol from the aptly named Combat Patrol magazine with a unit of Infernus Marines.

   These guys show a bit better than the captain I paint for the August Lions the chapter colour scheme. Should I have halved both shoulder pads as well as the bodies? In hindsight, probably not, but I'm pleased with how they look at 3 foot.

I am at the point with this project where I both never want to paint another model in the colour scheme and want to buy another box of something for it straight away. Its tough.

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Hosokawa Samurai

   Last for this side of the project we have the units of Samurai. There were a few moving parts on this one when it came to building the units and painting them.

   The first big decision was how big to do the units as Lion Rampant does regular units sizes and halves the unit size for "elite" units like knights, however, reading how most gamers who play this period do, they treat Samurai as slightly better regular troops and save the elite slot for Hatamoto Retinue, which seem to be elite Samurai. So, that is what I did.

   The second was a colour scheme. I decided to make this units a bit more interesting and to stand out for their Ashigaru regulars by letting each guy wear their own colours - to an extent - so the units are mixed. I think this helps the models stand out as elite, while not needing to be very elite in their rules. I then gave them all their back banners to tie them into the army again.

The two units of Samurai

The Samurai Archers

The Commander

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15mm Ashigaru Archers

   The next unit finished for my 15mm Feudal Japanese project is a unit of Ashigaru Archers, again, from the Hosokawa clan. Painted in the same way as they melee weapon carrying colleagues, the thing I struggled to find out was what the rule for their back banners was as half my guys have their hats on their back so can't fit a flag. As far as I can work out, there isn't really a rule for who does and does not wear them, but having a 50/50 split in a unit probably isn't massively historical, but limited by the figures I've done what I can.

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The Horror Of Fire

   As mentioned before, Pink Horrors need Blue Horrors, Blue Horrors need Brimstone Horrors, so here they are. Both units done as one big batch as their complexity level was pretty low.

   Nice easy job of Iyanden Yellow contrast over Wraithbone, with a couple of darker 'highlights' to really get some flames going.

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