For a long time I’ve dreamed of commanding a huge Imperial Guard army, capturing my vision of what human wars in the 41st Millennium are like. Alongside an equally vast adeptus mechanicus host, a few squads of space marines (truescale obviously) and perhaps a unit or two of custodes, would march a vast horde of human soldiers. Each would be personalised, converted into a unique character. Alongside them would roll the massed armour (even though painting tanks holds no appeal to me at all) and other warmachines, towering knights, squads of ogrens and so on. However so far common sense has continued to assert itself. Rather than rush out and spend all of my meagre earnings on guardsmen when I already have a horde of other unfinished projects demanding my attention, I’ve tried to keep it small scale, building up a squad, model by model. Perhaps it’ll grow in time into a platoon, then – maybe – a second, until one day I look round and find myself with an army waiting to march on my command. A few days ago I added a couple more guardsmen and, finding that rather than satisfying the creative urge this only exacerbated it, I’ve painted up another one.
In addition I went back to the medic I showed last year and made some adjustments, improving his paintjob and tying him into the slowly growing collection.
I suspect that for now I’ll be setting the guard aside and turning my focus elsewhere again but before we move on here’s a quick look at some of the other models I’ve assembled who will, in time, make their way out of unpainted morass and into the ranks of the Hammer of the Emperor.
And of course before we depart the guard entirely however there’s always room for another group shot of progress so far.
March 14th, 2018 at 10:25 am
They are a great looking group mate, with some crackers waiting in the wings too… that guy with the skull peeking over his shoulder is particularly intreaguing! I’d love to see a whole army of these, but yeah… the time that would taki is insane, not to mention the storage needed… maybe a good retirement project 🙂
March 14th, 2018 at 4:44 pm
Thank you 🙂 Yeah, this is definitely a “watch this space” kind of project, I too would love to see a whole army of them but it’s certainly not going to happen overnight!
March 14th, 2018 at 1:03 pm
Great stuff and I love the grandness of your vision. What an army that would make sweeping all before it. Your models so far ooze character and look like long serving foot sloggers willing to sell their lives for the good of the Throne.
March 14th, 2018 at 4:47 pm
Waxing philosophical for a moment, something that I’ve always really enjoyed about the 40k artwork is the combination of grand-scale warfare with detail and character. A painting may contain a hundred charging guardsmen but each one has their own expression, their own particular clothing and kit, the idiosyncratic details that mark them out as individuals and characters. For me this is right at the heart of what excites me about 40k and so regardless of how many models are in a collection I want them all to be individuals (see my 100 unique orks project for instance…)
March 14th, 2018 at 5:31 pm
These are great, each it unique, but they are still cohesive as a whole!
March 14th, 2018 at 5:32 pm
Thank you – that’s very much what I was hoping to achieve 😀
March 15th, 2018 at 9:10 am
Great man.
March 15th, 2018 at 9:45 am
Cheers dude 😀