Salamanders Chapter Sternguard

Been away....

I put finishing touches on this Sternguard yesterday, in between assembling an Imperial Bastion. I'm mixing the Sternguard freely into my tactical squads, as I notice is also done by the GW team in their photography. I don't have squad identifiers and my intent is to raise the bar on my troops by working in the very best models that GW make, and I reckon these Sternguard are among the best they've ever done.

This pose in particular truly captures - I think - the dark adventure of 40k, and the sledgehammer heroism of the Space Marines.

Chaos Warhound

Pilot model for my Winter army. Wanted the colours to mesh with the warriors without being just the same paints. Fun model. Needed some greenstuff over the top of its head to repair some imperfections, but okay otherwise.

Salamanders scouts

Painting up some scouts for my Salamanders..

I'm fairly happy with this test model. I've bought into the retconned fluff about them all being red-eyed and black and given this one ash white hair for contrast. Otherwise the scheme is my own with desert-coloured fatigues and black rather than white shoulder pads.

Update July 17:
With the new landspeeder storm model coming I see GW have done one in Salamaders livery... and the scouts are done differently to the Armageddon campaign era of years ago. Gone are the white shoulder pads and their scheme is pretty much exactly what I've done above!

The Winter of our Chaotic Intent

I'd been thinking about my Chaos horde and what other direction I might take with it. It wasn't Norscan enough for my liking, and I've come up with a different approach.

I'll call this my Winter army, pending such time as a suitably brutal name comes to mind.

Here's the scheme, written for me to remember it as much as anything:

Cloak is khemri, up through graveyard to bleached bone, washed with watered-down scorched. Gloves, boots and belt are charadon, highlighted charadon/bleached bone mix. Fur is fenris up to shadow/space wolf mix. Lots of metals and asurmen and leviathan wash. Baal on the gold and tiny bits of red elsewhere.

Salamander with heavy weapon

Gobsmasha finally does another model... A Salamander wot likes to burn stuff.
Can't really have Salamanders and not have one or two multi-meltas, can I?

Bloodmoon's Cadre

This is a Tau fire warrior done a while back as a test model for an army I will do at some point, tentatively named for his intended general... the infamously combat drug-happy Tau leader known as Commander Bloodmoon, who I invented.

The intention was a bright warm scheme where I could use shades of blue-green for sensor lights, drawing some inspiration from Star Wars clone troopers.
Fairly pleased with it.
He has no mates yet, I'm still busy working on other stuff.

Salamanders HQ

This is my Salamanders captain, who I recruited to replace my old captain, who fell in battle against the Necron Lord of Tombworld Sigil.
There are things about him I would change but overall I was happy with how he came out.

I used a High Elf banner part, cut in half, as the clasp badge, instead of the options on the commander sprue. This is in a shape that could be a Salamander's head, and I painted it gold with a ruby eye. He also carries a holy artifact from the Bretonnian men-at-arms sprue, which isn't visible in the pics. Other bits are raided from various space marine sprues. I modified his bolt gun with some scratchmade detail that can't be seen in the pics either, and offset the target finder to make the weapon seem more customised. I spaced the torso and legs slightly so he is actually taller than a standard marine in power armour.

The skull at his feet is from the Tomb Kings skeleton box. It has a left eyeball which I painted to represent a lens-eye, such as the captain himself sports in replacement of his original organ. What I had in mind there was a narrative comment that he too may someday meet the same fate...

Men of Averland

Here are four of my Empire men, three swordsmen and an engineer with a telescope.

I picked this scheme for it's strongly Germanic feel. The Empire is the Warhammer world's analogue of the Holy Roman Empire, which was centred mostly in what is now Germany, and was famously said not to be Holy, Roman or an Empire. Players of the sublime Medieval II Total War will recall the HRE are represented in these colours.

Averland currently has no incumbent Elector Count, so the scribes tell me... nevertheless they have legion of vampires, ghouls and undead nearby to keep them busy should Orcs, Beastmen and Chaos leave them wanting for a scrap.

The Empire is a beautifully imagined realm, a collage of ideas and impressions from gothic tales, Hammer films, the works of Michael Moorcock and history itself. Love it.

Imagine a tavern in this place...
High adventure, tankards of beer and smoking intrique swamped in perpetual fear of the evil night.

Chaos Warriors

An update with two models...

Salamanders Tactical Squad

Me playing with my camera again...

These are quite old models of mine, but much loved and many times fielded in battle in my study at home ... against Sigil's perfidious eldar, tyranids and necrons.