The Shadow Crusade

[Pictors Studio]

I'm heading back home to Nottingham next week and while there I'm going to try to pick up the Lernean Terminators my group needs to finish our Paramar campaign, along with a bunch of other stuff. 

In the meantime, I've been working on stuff for the Shadow Crusade campaign that we are going to start in late Spring.

I have the World Eaters, Ember Wolves, Death Dealers and Sentinels of the Edge stuff we will need, so next it is time to dive into the XVIIIth and XVIIth Legion stuff.

First up are the bad guys, of course.

Here are some Word Bearers.  Specifically a fire support squad.



They count as troops but not as a mandatory troop choice.  So you can use them to fill slots but not required slots, you still need some tactical marines to do that. 

The Word Bearers will be focused on doing mostly boarding actions, underground fights and a big city fight so I'm going to be staying away from vehicles.  For the most part at least. I'm sure a rhino or predator will sneak in there somewhere.  And they will definitely have a dreadnought since I have three of them sitting around.



These guys are all armed with flamers, except the sergeant. I've given him the plasma pistol from the CSM boxed set along with an arm I found in there.  It is a little chaosy but I figured the sergean would be a little further along the path than the rest of the squad and the Word Bearers dove into the warp before most other Legions even dipped a toe.

Flamers seemed like a useful weapon option.  While they may not be great against marines normally, 9 of them, in close quarters, might change that calculous. 



As far as painting goes, I used Khorne red over a black undercoat and then put contrast flesh tearers over that. 

It was edge highlighted with Mephiston red.  The black is just black with scavenblight dinge for highlights. 

The metal is iron warriors with an agrax earthshade wash or retributor armour with reikland fleshshade wash.

The imagery is all from decals, mostly from the Betrayal at Calth set, I think exclusively from that.  The details were touched up with some washes or paints here and there where it was needed.

And where would the Word Bearers be without their cowardly and conceited primarch Lorgar Aurelian?

Still in the Emperor's good graces possibly.

You've got to have him though so here he is too.



He probably won't show up in the campaign until about the 5th game.  I actually did him more than a month ago and haven't gotten back to doing anything for this while working on other stuff, mostly orders. 

[Muzfish4]

Nice work! Are you planning to field an Erebus to go with Lorgar?

[Pictors Studio]

Thank you!

These are pretty scenario specific armies.  The first few battles are going to be on the surface of Calth before the supernova (or whatever it was) and then probably a boarding action to kick off a BFG game. 

Lorgar himself is for that battle with Angron and Robute in the city on whatever planet that was. 

So I'll have to look into an Erebus.  I think he was on Calth so he might work with the first game but I'll do my research before I buy one.


Here are some more guys, tactical marines this time for the first tac squad.

[Cypher226]

Nice work.  Flamers are absolutely brutal in close quarters (assuming you're using the Zone Mortalis rules) - of course, I play Death Guard so mine are even better 

[Pictors Studio]

I'm looking forward to seeing them in action. 

I'm not sure yet how to do the Ultramarines.  I'm tempted to have them mostly be veteran squads to represent the disorder in their ranks after the initial betrayal.  So I'll probably do smaller units of fire support squads and irregular numbers representing some of the squads being significantly reduced right out of the gate.

Here is the rest of the 2nd Word Bearers squad. 



I have another 5 tactical marines assembled but they will have to wait until I get back to see any paint.  I may start to assemble a despoiler squad before I have to leave though. 

[Pictors Studio]

The first of the Gal Vorbak rolls of the painting line today.  I picked up some of these, some Ashen Circle troops, a few leader types including a diabolist and a XIIIth Legion Primarch while I was in the UK for this project.  I also bought some of the new plastic possessed to bulk out the squad to a 10-man squad and so there would be all unique sculpts in it. 



Neat figures, they look a little intimidating to paint with all the parts but once you decide on what is going to be what colour they are actually not hard at all to paint. 



I'm going to try to get the other four done this week.  I'm off Thursday and Friday with no plans other than to sit and paint. Hopefully, that will let me get a good bit of this stuff done along with the Ridgehauler I'm working on for my Spring Necromunda league. 

[Pictors Studio]

It took awhile to get the rest of the squad finished, but here they are.



They are pretty neat models.  I'm probably going to boost them to a 10 man squad.  I don't want more of the same models as that would look weird and they are expensive.  I'm going to get the new Chaos possessed and add them in.  They aren't exactly the same as they don't have the bolt spitters but I'll either modify them in some way or just say they do. 


I see that the squad can have a special weapon.  I suppose the guy with the flames coming out of him could count as having a warpflame blaster or some such thing.  He doesn't actually have a boltspitter modelled on him either.

[Pictors Studio]

And now for some guys from the other side.  Here are some Ultramarine terminators.  Someone has to stand up to the baddies, after all.



These are the first 5 of what will ultimately be a 10-man squad.

I'll probably give them the flamer that comes with the set vs. any of the other weapons.  I don't want the Ultramarines to be kitted out with stuff that will be super effective against other marines.  They are going to be designed to have stuff that would be of most utility against Orks.



I went with the metallic blue on them rather than the more traditional ultramarine blue because I thought it looked cool and was a nice contrast to the two traitor forces.

[Muzfish4]

The metallic blue works really well - they look great!

[Pictors Studio]

Thank you.  I got some more of the loyalists done.  This time a support squad, well half of one at any rate.



I really do like this blue.  I like how it looks on these guys even better than on the terminators.  Plus it is super fast to do.



I have a pretty good start on half of a Word Bearer's despoiler squad, all the chain sword guys at any rate. I'll post them when they are done.

[Pictors Studio]

Time for another Word Bearer.  This time a character.



This is a Forge World model.  I got it when I was in Nottingham.  I've looked at this model a bunch of times but never really had a good army to use it in.  It seemed a little over the top for Thousand Sons and way wrong for World Eaters or Rout.  But it works perfectly for Word Bearers.

I'll have to get back to doing more regular infantry soon and I'll probably start on Roboute next week. 

[Orctrader]

Impressive figures.

[Legion1963]

Although initialy i was very enthousiastic about WH40K or rather Rogue Trader when the whole circus moved to Big Armies, i bowed out and went my way. However, the miniature of the Spacemarine standing on an altar or rock is very good or even outstanding. His face is painted in an excellent fashion. Actually, he looks like Aleister Crowley. 
Well done. Kudos to you & thanks for sharing. L63

[Pictors Studio]

Thank you, guys! 

I've moved on to some mortal troops for the armies of the Word Bearers.  I'm not sure how advanced their cultists would be by the time of Calth, but later in the campaign they probably had some raving lunatics. I love these models and will use them for the new Inquisitor game too, so by the time we get around to Armatura I'm sure I'll find a use for them in this Shadow Crusade campaign.



They are such cool figures I couldn't not paint them.



The Witch is my favourite.  It is a psykers head attached to some sort of preservation device with a guy walking around behind it supporting it, and the psyker.  He has tubes coming out of his arms.  I painted them so that red blood is going in from the left army and warp tainted blue blood is going back in to the right arm.

This was also the only figure that didn't get dust on the bottoms of his robes as the psyker likes to stay clean.



Of note, Warhammer 40K badies are so tough that while they may be guards for the leaders, Ringwraiths are guards only for the leaders of the lowest of the low in the Chaos forces. 

[Pictors Studio]

I managed to finish the full squad of volkite armed ultramarines.



They are going to be far from the most useful unit on the tabletop, but they will be pretty flavourful I think.  The XIIIth thought they were going to be going off to finish off some Orks, so volkite would be a weapon that would be perfect against them, even if not so much against fellow marines.



I'm still working my way through the last 5 Ultramarine terminators and I've started on the primarch himself. 

I'll post some pictures of the terrain my group is working on soon, too.