The last post on this little section of my website spoke briefly about how a catch up with a friend had resulted in me falling down a rabbit hole I knew only too well. This one attempts to tell the story about that rabbit hole, so bear with me as I reminisce... as briefly as I can.
Back in my early teens I enjoyed converting and painting models a little more than I did playing. The first model I painted was a Terminator for a friend in his chapters colours (Ramsmarines if you're curious, after Derby County... hey, we were young). I'd convert individual models and paint them up but it didn't take me long to start on the Orks; in my opinion one of the most enjoyable races to paint in the game. And also, anyone who knows Orks understands that adding to and collecting an Ork army doesn't stop. It just doesn't stop. And boy could you convert forever. I remember converting an entire Ork Blood Axe Kommando squad for Golden Demon out of the Blood Bowl blitzers and Varag Ghoul-Chewer (best Ork name ever). However, with 40K rule changes, Orks slowly led to Orcs as wyverns, spiders and piles and piles of Night Goblin fanatics became more interesting! And sooo much fun to paint. Now I know there's a distinct lack of photographs so far in this post and I promise to rectify that in due course but camera phones weren't around much in 2000. To get to the photographs, however, is straight forward and needs one simple book.
Ravening Hordes.
This brief booklet was ultimately a 'stop gap compendium' until official army books could be released for the new edition of Warhammer. And it opened the flood gates. Flicking through the pages there were some armies I'd not heard of before, one of which, a cliché I know, but would change my Warhammer experience. There were a couple of sketches on an army page full of cool regiments like Skeleton Chariots that portrayed skeletal warriors plastered with Egyptian iconography - Tomb Kings.
Put aside the awesome Egyptian mythology or the poisonous asp arrows that the skeleton warriors could fire, this was an army that I HAD to convert most of the models for as they didn't exist. Carrion? Chariots? Skeleton Archers? It was heaven. And ultimately led to my very unique and individual Tomb King force and one that I do have some photographs of.
Four unique warriors from my infamous Tomb King army
I may even share some more photographs if you ask nicely, but these models were always so dear to my heart that I do regret moving them on in my hiatus away from the hobby.
Imagine then, that when I get enticed back and watch a game of the new Warhammer 40,000, see all the dice rolling and Marines dying, that I want a little part of my Tomb Kings back. I've spoken on another blog as a guest post (Debbie Rushby's Blackhand Marines) that having done the whole mass infantry Ork army I was keen to go the other way and find a small elite force that I could build quickly. There is an army in the 40,000th Millennium, in fact they've been around for longer than most any other army, that mirror the Tomb Kings; at least if you squint a little. The Necrons.
When the first plastic Necron warriors were released all those years ago I did a test colour scheme and as the Aeldari (not got used to the new namings yet) were desimating a Space Wolf force I was wondering if I could start these up again and perfect that colour scheme. And then, stupidly, I looked at the models.
!!!
Hands down some of the coolest models in the game right now, and I hadn't seen about 80% of them. Tomb Blades, new Wraith models, an Annihalation Barge which just sounds cool, and then there's the Triarch Stalker! (Oh and don't even get me started on Forge World!)
Now the benefit I have over you here is that I know the colour scheme I'm going to use, but that's for the next post. I needed some models to experiment and play around with the colour scheme so between gym and photoshoots I had a walk down to my local store and picked up...
A simple way back in would be a game of Shadow War Armageddon and a small Necron kill team.
I'll leave this post for the moment as it's now quite late but I'd just like to say thank you to all the positive comments and conversations about the last blog post. This is going to be a lot of fun to write and so much has happened in such a short amount of time that I can't wait to tell you all about it. I'm not going to let these models get away with not being photographed like some of my other armies and models.
Next time... the colour scheme!
Until then, have a great weekend and come to say hey on Twitter.
Chris