Wednesday 6 July 2011

Would you ever "re-do" an army?

So just a quick(ish) update from me on what's going on (*self edit* turns out its not so quick, not even ish!). Obviously I am trying to pump out a bit of a deathwing tactical series - this will be fractionally on hold until after Brighton Warlords next week - but next up in that is the second basic deployment article in the phalanx - which covers some variations as well, hopefully pretty cool - also have some quick articles about Ravenwing, Belial and Upgrades - one of these might see its way to the site in the next week though.

I've got a few bits I need to do the the army before I go down, nothing major - just make sure those bikes are what I now will refer to as "stupid WYSIWYG" because not only does GW explicitly rule that you do not need to represent standard wargear on a model (I.E anything that's not an upgrade and comes as standard) but when I put the GW provided grenades on, that apparently wasn't enough either! All I say is good luck to anyone with Grey Hunters - Bolt Pistols, Grenades, CC Weap and Boltgun on every model?! Heaven forbid you run a Ork army with Cybork units lol!

Anyway it shouldn't be too much work. I need to repair two models and have some minor paint touch ups. If I feel particularly bored I can re-do some shoulders and arms. I do need to finish off the banner bearer as well as some little touches to the command squad that I missed last time round. So its basically a case of v.easy stuff to get 99.9% complete, a lot of monotonous small bits to get 100%!


But once its done its done ... or is it?

Recently I've really been thinking about completely redoing the entire force. I really love the army itself, but I have to say I did rush it a fair bit, and have some really cool idea's for a new version. When I made it, I did it as a sort of a "theme without a real theme", but I have to say right now I really want an army that either has an extremely strong theme (I.E fluffy count as) or is straight up Codex scheme and painted to the best of my ability. I have a few idea's that I'd like to run by you and see what you guys think.

Honestly - I am contemplating starting this army again - would you ever think of doing this? Anyway - on to my thought process.


IDEA ONE:


First off is a straight up Codex Dark Angels Deathwing. Originally I thought Pre-Heresy (black armour) but really I think they would look a bit too Black Templars without close inspection, and lets face it, the bone/white armour is rather iconic. Here's some things that are quite inspiring to me doing this:

Ron FTW's Pre Heresy DW Piece - Sort of route I'd take.
Commision Piece from B&C - Very.Crisp and Traditional
VanSam's DW dread from B&C - He has a lot more if I can locate it



Of course this Belial just makes me weak at the knee's - I just love it. The detailing on the legs (the embossing) is something I really want to add to my models. This is the sort of thing I'd love to do - have more of a "figure head" at the point of the army.

So that's some pretty cool stuff - I think a full on traditional Deathwing Army would look great, and I do absolutely adore the Dark Angels fluff - they are probably my favourite marine chapter along with the Lamenters. I like those "fallen" and "wronged" sort of images of their background. Very tempting I have to say.


IDEA TWO

Is to just do a straight up normal codex chapter (I.E non-Dark Angels or Successor) - now one that really strikes me is the Howling Griffons - and this is for a few reasons. The colours are actually the same as my family crest (except "flipped" in the wrong quarters). Secondly they are two of the hardest colours to paint, and thirdly I do think its the only quartered pattern that looks good (that comes to mind). Plus I love (much like the Mantis Warriors) how they have multiple "colour schemes" - from the black to the sort of crazy airbrush look. I've desperately wanted to do a HG army since I saw this picture:


http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/index.php?showtopic=200931

Its by no means the best painted, it actually strikes me as so very similar to the way I paint when I bosh out quick models, but just that colour scheme looks so effective.

IDEA THREE:

Thirdly I was thinking of just going down this new fangled route of "crazy count as" - just a pure themed army. Rupert from 3++ did his Deathwing with Ork bits for a "deffwing". I really do like a lot of the chaos history, and having seen this a few times, I really fancy giving it a pop myself - Lustwing:

Ron FTW again - very nice mini-force using SW rules.

I believe this won 3rd Place in a GD - and seeing it how can you honestly not want to do attempt to re-create that model? Check out more of the model here http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/index.php?showtopic=84833 - its just amazing. 

This sort of count-as could be quite fun. Obviously lust-wing doesn't need to be the route taken. There - there's things such as the Dornian Heresy to draw upon (imagine Khornesque Space Wolfed up Terminators, or Nurgle Blood Angels), a Legion of the Damned 1st Company - all skulled heads for example - and again there is my "Spartan" idea I was thinking of.

IDEA FOUR:

Pre-Heresy. There's a few chapters I like, namely the ones that end up falling to Chaos, this gives you tons of options rather than just an "new take on a existing scheme" and you could do 2 or 3 variants of the same army - for example the straight up pre-heresy scheme, then some of the "heresy" bits, and of-course a full blown descent to chaos 41st millennium style.


This absolutely gorgeous army can be again found over at the Bolter and Chainfists and just demonstrates a extremely nicely executed pre-heresy scheme - and without doing all the new fangled forge world bits - just keeping it simple - stunning paint scheme which is amazingly well executed.

SO?

Does anyone else ever get like this? Wanting to re-do an army (I know Adam from Space Wolves has/is). Anyone encountered multiple and diverse inspirations and struggled to settle?

Out of the idea's here, what do people like as well? Interested to hear people's thoughts. And would you ever consider re-doing one of your existing armies? 

Grey Knights and Sisters oh and Demons!?:

This is not to forget that I actually have 3 other projects on the go! I actually have my Grey Knights in assembly stage, and I've finally got excited about a colour scheme for them. It WONT be the pink models - oh that's saved for the Sisters of Battle which I am also starting (as a complete laid back/fun project). With the Grey Knights I am going metallics - and not NNM - I want to try and prove myself wrong that metallics can look good - and going for a much darker scheme than the normal codex (though still will be clearly identifiable) and hopefully very unique. I am going to use some new techniques and I have a very cool idea for how I am going to prime them to squeeze some extra dramatic effects out of them - either the likes of sky earth effect or object source lighting.

Demons? Well I am getting hounded at the LGS and I do kind of want to give WHF a bit of a fiddle - I've thought up a force I kind of want and worked out a way to bulk paint like 60 models (thanks Army Painter Dragon Red + Washes) - really since I won't play tourneys or anything I don't really care about the quality of rank upon rank - I'll paint like 11 good models per unit (10 front rank and 1 for the back to show people when they ask) and the characters ofcourse will be nice - you know, how your MEANT to paint warhammer. Oh and handily enough it doubles as a 40K army

Damn that's a lot of painting on my horizon lol.

6 comments:

  1. Venerable Brother6 July 2011 at 17:18

    Re.Do.
    Are you fucking crazy?

    It takes me long enough to get a chuffin' army 'tournament ready' once, let alone twice!!!

    I find the idea of a pre-Heresy army very tempting...but its marines.. ;)

    oh, and I'm in the Grey Hunters WYSIWYG category...need alot of luck...

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  2. Haha - slightly crazy I think. I knocked out that 1750 in 6 weeks total, and I only had a loose idea for a scheme - so while I am sort of pleased with it, I am at the same time ... not? if that makes sense. And this will be my primary/secondary army for pretty much the rest of 5th I am guessing - I still have a good bit of play time with it left - and lets face it - not that many models to paint lol ;D

    Its a shame I didn't see the lustwing when I started, because I think I'd have done that straight away, but I am really feeling the whole preheresy thing right now. I might rustle up a test model or unit in my "free" time.

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  3. http://sciborminiatures.com/en_,shop.php?art=1120#i/conversion_parts_2011/big/archangel_01.jpg

    Oh god that might have to be my new Belial.

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  4. lunatic, haha. how about, instead of re-doing the army, you recognise your achievment, accept it as part of a learning process and start another project? seriously, the DW look great and it would be a great shame to repaint them.

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  5. What Atreides said.
    Saw that Scibor a week ago or so and thought it'd be perfect as a JP Libbie for a DoA BA army...

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  6. Yeah Andy made some good sense really. Which is lucky as I was going to buy the first set of models to convert to lustwing tonight lol. Maybe in the future ... but not for now anyway.

    I really like the Howling Griffon scheme though, which is understandable as it is identical to my family crest (which was actually the basis for my old glade guard shields in whf back in the early 00's) - so that will be my GK scheme - it will look odd at first, but I think I can make it work ;D

    Sisters are going to be pink though, and turquoise. Awesome.

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