Civs 40k Narrative Collection

I managed to get hold of some Kasrkin and quite liked the poses and the idea of having some hit squads in my force.

Ive been trying to improve my face painting process and starting with a purple base and been really enjoying the results.

Tried more with the sword on this guy as well and again am happy with the results, need to find premixed colours to make it more consistent and find a better white as the one i had ended up clumping together which for blending purposes was less than ideal.

Other than this guy i’ve got about 15 more painted up and i am thoroughly fed up with painting white.

Next up i’m painting the ecclesiarchy, going for the red and white classic look.

Got a selection of priests and missionary’s to paint up to bolster the spirits of my cadians for the war against the greenskins.

These are just WIP pictures at the moment, ive been tryign to put more effort into the faces as this is generally the focus point, meaning i can put less effort in elsewhere. This is keeping with my overall approach to this force, focus on painting what matters and  the rest i can rely on the zenithal to cover off or just oil wash.

The yellow chainswords are a bit to distracting at the moment so im minded to put some hazard stripes on to tone them down a bit. Then ive got to work out how i want to dot he robes. Do i leave some as just grey cloth in line with the troopers or do i go for rich greens/reds? Choices choices.

I decided my Cadians would be very light on vehicles, this means for me nothing heavier than a chimera APC.

Someone still needs to keep these lighter vehicles and guns going though so i painted up two enginseers.

These guys i used the oil wash approach again, put down the base colours, adding a variety of metallics in to give it some variation and then washed in oil and wiped off the next day.

The only bit i didn’t use the oil on was the faces as i wanted these to pop a bit more.

To differentiate the two a bit i painted a white pattern onto one of the cowls. Was a bit torn about doing it as the red and white did make it look a bit like father Christmas but i am hoping the squares are enough to make it look more mechanicus than Christmas.

I had managed to get a Krieg artillery piece but given i was collecting Cadians i did some head swaps to bring them in line with the rest of my force.

The barrel can be swapped out, so can be either a mortar type or the longer barrel version.

Really enjoyed painting this, had been putting it off for a while, mainly due to the size of the piece. Luckily a quick airbrush session allowed me to get some modulation on the model and i’ve been leaning more into oil washes recently to get the metals and overall shading looking right.

I need to add some decals to the gun shield but realised later on in the project that all the cadian transfers are white…..

So once again im doing an epic ork army, a 28mm ork force and a fleet in BFG.

First up was the 28mm force.

Having been passed a sizeable Ork army from my brother who left the hobby i did the only sensible thing any addict hobbyist would do and i added to it.

I always saw the Orks as a horde army and so ended up with about 50 boys altogether, some from my brother and some as an ebay rescue.

Next they needed some leaders. The nobz from the assault on black reach set made a nice addition, along with a rescue Trukk from facebook marketplace to cart them about.

Added to this a Mek boy mainly as i loved the model and, because it fits, some meganobz who have benefited from this crazy meks inventions and some killa kans. The mek has been a busy ork indeed.

I then added some grots as no self respecting ork army would do their own camp chores and they needed someone to boss about. This is all about building the typical army i think of with Orks and that also means the behind the scenes support.

Finally i’ve some kommandos as i just loved the models. These i bought from GW and they came as finecast, which if i knew how much of a mess they would be i would not have bought.

I do have some Deffkoptas i could add but im trying to limit myself in 28mm to what i can fit on a single shelf and given the amount of models here im already over by some ways.

The Epic Force

Given that epic is discontinued and, weirdly not very well supported in the 3d printing world as the guard are, i did have to go to ebay to gather up some mobz. Luckily there still seems to be a lot of it kicking about (at least the plastic frames) so i grabbed a few and the odd metal minis to start building the force.

Here im aiming for an evil sunz biker/car mob, since the models seem to be quite easy to pick up, plus a few mobz of boys and nobz. Given ive got a Mek about ive also got a few gargants since their guard counterparts will have knights and titans as well.

Ive got a few tanks here, simialr to the guard i’ve not included any in the 28mm force as theyre just too big, but in epic scale i can have loads so there will be a few supporting tanks. I’ll also include a few aircraft since the guard have some valkyries on hand.

The Ork Fleet

Now ive got to be honest i havent thought about this bit at all, i dont even know what would make up a fleet but i know i need to have one to fill out the narrative and make it so this whole campaign isnt a series of orbital bombardments by the Imperial Navy.

Once again i’ll post up pictures as and when i make progress. the 28mm ork force is well on the way to being painted, the rest remains untouched…for now.

The imperial guard have always been my favourite 40k faction, the regular human facing against the big bads of the 40k universe.

Whilst in my head it would be nice to imagine in the 40k universe I would be a space marine, humanities finest warrior, I know deep down I would be a humble guardsman at best, so this is where I chose to imagine my gaming.

Helpfully with 3d printing getting an epic guard army was super easy, there are some great files online full of all the infantry and tanks a guard officer could dream of.

Once printed, I painted my 3d printed guard army in a white and grey theme (probably influenced by star wars in some fashion) with a blue base to add some colour. (I’ll add pics later)

I then decided to paint up a 28mm guard force, nothing special, no rare tanks, no special characters, just your bog standard infantry platoon and supporting equipment like sentinels and a chimera. I’m not even going to give them a tank, they’re somewhere else in the sector. This force was to represent the epic force but in a zoomed in battlespace. Same uniforms and camo patterns, same blue bases, same campaign.

Whilst your usual 40k force taken has a ton of special troops and ultra rare heroes i wanted mine to represent the more average force. The guard platoon or the ork mob full of standard boys. I always like to see the average force played as thats what I think 40k battle would be like.

I’m currently working through this 28mm force so will add pictures and info as I get them done.

The story would follow a group of cadians being deployed to a world overrun by orks.

It would start off small and build from there. The skirmish level would get no bigger than a platoon and some support weapons for the cadians and for the orks probably many many boyz with the odd vehicle or special unit chucked in to represent what I saw as the “normal” ork mob.

Once past that we would be into epic scale, including some adeptus titanicus forces and maybe thrown in some battlefleet gothic action, though this may be more narrative and less based on any game play.

I’m very much coming at this from the human view point, after all who wants to see the plucky human overcome by the vile xenos greenskin.

I’ll flesh this out in time, giving the world and the protagonists names, deeds and laurels as they go on to earn them. Companies/mobz and characters will rise and fall.

For now im using it to tie all my forces in the 40k universe together and give it all some wider purpose.

This is my second time around collecting in the 40k universe and I wanted to come at it differently. Rather than collect each army/force independently why not have them as part of a grander campaign which i could use to tell a story and help myself immerse more into the whole 40k universe.

Now 3d printing has become a thing I got into playing some epic after missing out the first time.

I have always thought 40k belonged at the epic scale, 28mm was fine until you started introducing weird things like a supporting basilisk on the front line. Epic for me was how you played out those planetary invasions or sector wide defences.

It’s from here the idea came, probably very much influenced by the PC game final liberation. I would collect an epic guard and epic ork army. I’d then collect 28mm “zoomed” in forces so I could simulate smaller skirmishes and similarly collect some battlefleet gothic fleets for both factions to represent the wider space engagements.

This wasn’t just going to be a stand alone army, these were all going to connect and tell the story of a single campaign, from system wide fleet defences all the way to the smaller skirmish games I could play it all out.