My initial response when I heard that there was going to be another ‘Paint or Die’ was “Sign me up!” I love finishing new armies and painting bets are a sure fire way for me to get off my butt and finish things. Even the slowest painters will produce when there are a gazillion Baneblades on the line. Quality can sometimes go down the toilet in painting bets but if you get working right at the start it’s easy to produce a solid looking army in the time allotted.

Army List

     So close to finished and so many temptations on my plate. My raptors are now 99% finished. I just need to do a few minor highlights and base them. I kind of fell in love with my Nurgle colour scheme so I went with that on them instead of the classic red. Thanks to the thinner I’m using all of my Nurgle units smell orangey fresh. The Slaanesh sorcerer probably made them bathe in perfume before they could join the army.

            Other than that my sorcerer and the Violators rhino are on the go. I still need to build my terminator banner bearer but I should have that finished today. I’ve just about finished Abbaddon, his sword just needs detailing and blending. I also got my 2 shadowswords table top ready, not finished but I won’t feel ashamed putting them on the table. Lastly I’ve built and primed a terminator retinue for Typhus and Abbaddon’s retinue is in a box beside my paint table. Lastly I managed to grab an old Warhound titan for the big game this weekend and it’s almost screaming at my to get to work on it – I can hardly wait.

       Well this week has been absolutely insane. I’ve been trading smack talk with one of our regulars for about six months now, and we eventually decided to have a ridiculous 26k per side Apocalypse game. After going through my collection I realized that I only had 24,000 points painted, so I’ve been in a frenzy painting for the game on November 24th at the Oakville bunker.
          
  So this week, I painted a Nurgle Rhino and started my 6 Raptors for Paint or Die. For my Apocalypse game I’ve built two Shadowswords, a painted Land Raider, a Rhino, two Leman Russ Vanquishers, a Leman Russ Demolisher, painted Typhus and converted a plastic Abbaddon model. As a side note, if you have any leftover Baneblade battle cannons they make a quick Vanquisher by sticking it on a Demolisher turret (“Much better than Nick Pruiksma’s Earthshaker cannons” I say).

            This week the plan is to finish my Raptors for Paint or Die. On top of that I’ll be building and hopefully painting Terminator retinues for both Abbaddon and Typhus, and getting the basecoats on the Shadowswords.

           Well progress has been a bit slow with my Plague Marines because I developed a case of painters block that’s bogged me down until recently. My plan to use many layers of washes over Astronomicon Grey produced models that looked like the ones I was producing when I was 12. Fortunately I got over that hump thanks again to advice on Black Gobbo. In a Tau Piranha master class I remember they used washes of oil paints to get a nice weathering effect. Well I tried it and it produced just the look I wanted. All of my detail drips and slime showed through nicely and I was able to control where the paint built up and make streaky bitz thanks to the oils viscosity.

            Well Abu just brought it to my attention that my army list wasn’t up on the site yet – whoops! I already have quite a large Chaos army (Iron Warriors) and this list was written to allow me to experiment with some different colour schemes and to add some Apocalypse units to my army.
As much as I love them, I’ve gotten bored of painting my silver marines so the first thing I wanted in the army was some Slaanesh units. I jumped to throw in a Sorcerer with the lash of submission but after using it in several games I’ve decided it can make my games a little too easy. There’s nothing like moving enemy units out of cover so they can be shot up and assaulted without the benefit of cover! As fun as it is, I’m now reserving that ability for my most hated opponents (you know who you are!).  I gave the Sorcerer terminator armour and a 6 man terminator unit to go along with him. I then added a 10 man unit of Slaanesh marines with a Rhino with a Havoc upgrade for extra firepower and mobility. I decided to paint up these 2 units as bright blue and white Violator marines. They were pictured in the last Chaos Codex and they were featured in a novel, Daemon World I think, they looked pretty cool. I gave those units a white chalice as a shoulder icon.
Next I chose a 10 man undivided marine unit with a Rhino with the Havoc upgrade. These were painted up with green armour blended into turquoise with bone trim. I painted a beige flaming chalice as their shoulder badge. I added a dreadnought with a multi melta to their contingent which I haven’t thought of a name for yet. Fire Drinkers is what keeps coming to mind but it seems lame. I chose a multi melta for the dread because it’s nice and cheap at 10 points, and I’ve never seen one in a Chaos army. I must admit that I thought it would be fairly useless with its short range but its AP1 hitting power is racking up a respectable number of tank kills.
My two defilers are dedicated to Khorne, which doesn’t fit in at all with the army theme but I only included them in the list to push myself to convert them into Khorne’s Brass Scorpions for Apocalypse, and boy am I happy that I did (and I even finished a third one already). I’ve used the 3 of them in a few Apocalypse games already and those bad boys are nuts! Armour 13 and 2 structure points doesn’t sound like much but super heavies are much more resilient with the new rules, they really did a great job of capturing the feel for them. You can still get a lucky chain reaction and take one down after a penetrating hit, not with glancing, but it hasn’t happened yet. The real beauty of these guys is that when they do die they go in an apocalyptic explosion 50% of the time (3d6” radius Str 9 AP2 hits for all)!!! Sometimes that nukes your own army, but Khorne doesn’t care!
Next up is a 7 man unit of Plague Marines with a Rhino with Havoc Launcher yet again. This is what I’m working on right now and I’ve been using the ideas for converting Chaos Renegades form the US GW site. I’m having a blast with these guys too. I’ve been adding some slimy putty globs to their armour joints and sticking horns through their pads and pin drilling damage everywhere. Black Gobbos ideas were really inspiring for me. I’ll be painting them in dirty white colours of the Legion of Decay because it looks like fun and I really don’t want to do the traditional green, as I didn’t want pink for my Slaanesh. I’ll also be using many layers of dirty washes to get that good, filthy look.