Claw and Order

In a quest for variety, I've stepped away from painting 40k units to keep up with (or trail massively behind) my Combat Patrol Magazine subscription, and gone towards painting some other 40k units that were just lying around the place.

First off the pile was a unit of Tyranid Gargoyles that have been sitting around in their box since I had a sudden burst of GW enthusiasm about 4 years ago and suddenly bought several new Chaos fantasy things (some of which are, of course, still in their boxes) and for some reason threw these into the order as well. 

I normally like plastic kits with lots of possible variety on the sprues, but these are the exact opposite. Other than being able to pick which head goes on which body, and the exact angle of the arms, you don't have any choices at all with these. This was actually quite helpful given I was treating them as a quick 'n' easy job. Bish, bosh, new unit ready. 

I also had some terrain bits lying around. I printed out a couple of big aquilae waaaay back when I made some buildings using old Necromunda bulkheads and then never painted. I decided, since these would take about 15 minutes to paint, that I should probably get on with it.

Then, the main event. I'd had a metal squad of Rogue Trader/2nd Edition era Adeptus Arbites sitting around for well over a decade. I randomly painted a couple in advance of our first Apocalypse game for Christmas 2024, then they disappeared to the back of the queue again. Suddenly, it was time.

But that's not all. A while ago I'd been taken by the idea of having several squads of these to accompany an Ordo Hereticus inquisitor, so I bought some files from Monstrous Encounters on MyMiniFactory, which sat unused on my hard drive for a while, and then Monstrous Encounters had a deal to get their whole back catalogue for cheap, so I did that, and then that sat unused for a while, and then, eventually...

I got a bit carried away. 

I realised that I can use them as veteran Imperial Guard squads, which have options to take all shotguns and to have carapace armour - so it's a perfect fit.

I also had files for some Makers Cult penal legion proxies, so I've printed some of those and given them a Mordian sergeant as a penal custodian. This is another unit I'd like to do more of, although at a fixed 80 points for each squad they're unlikely to form the backbone of an army by themselves. 

I'm definitely in a Guard mood at the moment so there's likely to be more of this before I wander off somewhere else. Stand by for that!