A Tale of One Gamer - Part One

Anyone familiar with Games Workshop and White Dwarf will have seen the article series 'A Tale of Four Gamers'. For those not acquainted with the series, it features... well... four gamers (HA)! But what these guys are up to is collecting a new army in a manner that many of us at home might - assuming we might maintain a small amount of discipline. Each participant selects his new army and a Battleforce (a pre-packaged collection designed to provide a small mixed force of a GW army), with the goal of painting it in one month. The goal of the next month is to add enough troops to make a 'codex legal' army and get in at least one game - maybe 750 or 1000 points. The third month is 1500 points and the fourth 2000 points, with a game in each...

So, what am I on about? I'm going to attempt this project solo by building TWO new Warhammer 40k armies and alternating months! That means TWO 2000 points armies finished over the course of eight months... my problem will be maintaining focus for that long as I am riddled with Gamer ADD. I also have no plans to suspend work on my Battle of the Boyne collection (the Warfare Miniatures Horse packs will be out soon), so this will be quite the challenge!

Something I also want to avoid is going broke pursuing this little project (GW kits are pricy). With that in mind, I decided to limit my initial army choices and my 'Battleforce' selection to the piles of unpainted plastic that I already have languishing in storage cupboards. My first choice had to be Space Marines! I have a 2000+ point Crimson Fist army and a mountain of kits purchased with megalomaniacal dreams of expansion. However, I want to paint something new so I'm going to add another chapter to my Imperial collection. I am a huge fan of Forge World's Imperial Armour books and the Red Scorpions are featured in two sets - The Anphelion Project and the Badab War. They have a very different color scheme than the Crimson Fists, but will look great allied along side them for Apocalypse games.

My second choice, based on models I already have is Tyranids (also featured in the Anphelion Project). I don't remember buying the models, but at some point I acquired a large box of plastic sprues for these alien monsters. The new 'How to Paint Citadel Miniatures' book has a chapter on painting Hive Fleet Kraken Tyranids using mostly washes that I am keen to try out - it looks like an extremely fast way to paint a force which will be very useful with a horde army.

While I do have lots of sprues around, I don't have an actual Battleforce box set for either army. For the Space Marines I do have the Assault on Black Reach set which is close. This gives me a squad of Tactical Marines, a squad of Terminators, a Dreadnought, and a Space Marine Captain - around 500 points depending on the options I choose and a good start toward my legal codex army (all I am lacking is one more Troops choice). For my Tyranids, my initial group will simply be cobbled together from what I have on hand which looks like 18 Termagants, 8 Hormagaunts, 3 Tyranid Warriors, and a Carnifex - roughly 450 points, again depending on the options. Expanding this force will require an HQ (and a few more Hormagaunts - a legal unit would be 10+ models).

Ok - that's four 'units' for each force which gives me a fairly relaxed painting schedule considering I can allot a whole week to single figures in some cases. I think the Space Marines will be up first - I'll post WIP shots as I get on...