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This blog will be to document the assembly and painting of my 1500 point Guard army based off of the Cadian VIII, the Lord Castellan's Own. The aim is to achieve a solid table top standard in an effort to create a striking, vibrant force on the battlefield. This army will consist of the following:

1 x CCS
2 x PCS
4 x Infantry squads w/ attached heavy weapon
2 x Veteran squads
2 x Vendettas
2 x Leman Russ Demolishers
4 x Chimeras

This is quite a lot of work to do, and fortunately I have not assigned myself a time limit by which to have them done by. Truthfully, I haven't even bought the entire force yet, as the sight of so much bare plastic is quite depressing. In an attempt to offset this I have chosen to buy about 3 boxes a time and get them all finished before I make anymore purchases. This keeps the army growing whilst reducing the amount of aforementioned bare plastic I have to stare at. So far I've finished two of the Infantry squads and half completed the CCS and one PCS.

Despite my plethora of time allocated to this project I hope to have it completed in approximately 2-3 months, so be prepared for the long haul people! I'll try and keep the updates rolling in as and when I get squads finished, but I may feel inclined to jot down my musings every now and then as well.

So, without further ado, I will commence with some pretty, pretty pictures!....in the next post. Got to keep the interest up somehow haven't I?

L. Wrex


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Jan/Feb 2010

Upon opening my first batch of boxes my initial reaction was; 'Wow...that's a lot of men, and that's not even half the infantry!' Seriously, I have now built approx 20-30 soldiers and just over half of them are painted, a long, long way off from my final tally of over 70! Regardless, I cracked on and am very pleased with how the models are turning out, some of the extra little details you get in the kits are amazing, especially the CCS box, where it's liberally stuffed with respirators, knives, grenades as well as more exciting bits and pieces like standards, spare weapons and a HEAVY FREAKIN' FLAMER! Suffice to say I had great fun assembling the whole swathe of men, and managed to create both PCS and the CCS from the same box. Great stuff!

Whilst painting them I decided upon a method that was quick(ish) whilst at the same time giving some very pleasant results. I also made the cognitive decision to paint the eyes on all my Guardsman, as they really do add a lot to the character of the model, and really don't take that long to do. Honest!

My first test model came out looking like this:


The camera hasn't performed as admirably as I'd have liked here, but you can get the general gist of what I am trying to achieve. Here are a few more shots of Squad 101 (this number is derived from the platoon number 1XX and the number of the squad itself X01, thus 101)

Squad 101


Sergeant


Grenade launcher (note the drilled barrel)


Autocannon


Comments and criticism is, as always, encouraged so do please let me know what you think of my work so far. Next post: the CCS and PCS

Until next time!

L. Wrex

Looks keen. Keep at it!

show us MORE!!!

I really like the traditional look of your army. It makes me believe the Cadian Gate will continue to stand firm against the Chaos hordes.

I'll be interested in hearing how well the list plays against other armies. My 1500 tourney list is similar (in my article - see signature) but has some longer ranged tanks and a limited scouting/outflanking and indirect fire capability. I also went with commissars (which I had previously avoided like the plague). Your list has more veterans and the benefit of Vendettas. I chose not to add any skimmers to the list since I dread hauling them around during tournaments with lots of grabby folks. The models look cool and everyone wants to touch them. Unfortunately they don't fare well when tipped over or dropped. I may use them for friendly quiet games with just the FLGS crowd.

Keep it up! I'll be among the many regular readers.

Looks awesome

Hay there

Keep up the good work soldier you make cadia and the emperor proud.

The cadian 45th

Carlsson wrote:show us MORE!!!

MORE you say? You want...MORE?! Oh, all right then!

I started working on the CCS and the PCS earlier on this week, nether unit is 100% finished yet, but progress is so far going very well. The CCS is fully tooled up with 4 plasmagunners and a chimera and I'm in the process of scrounging the plastic guns from friendly people at my LGS. The PCS is more fire-orientated, sporting 4 x flamers to toast hordes and also seriously test the armour saves of Marines/Terminators.

These guys were great fun to both build and paint, the slight alterations provided a welcome break from the monotony of standard troops, and allowed me to lavish a little bit more time and attention onto the models. The regimental numbering on these squads differs slightly from those on standard troops. The CCS has 8@2 on it, where the '@' represents a skull. This denotes the unit as the 2nd (XX2) Command Section (X@X) of the 8th Regiment (8XX), the PCS again is a little different and when completed will have 1@1 on their pads; relating to the 1st Command Section (X@1) of the 1st Platoon (1XX).

Anyway, enough chat, picture time!

CCS


Commander


Plasmagunner


Platoon Commander


Flamer


WIP PCS


And finally, as a tease, my next update will include something a little bigger, and with tracks!

Thank you for all the positive feedback, please keep letting me know your thoughts.

L. Wrex

oh come on man! how could you have the commander be anything but the tactical genius himself

Ennkay wrote:oh come on man! how could you have the commander be anything but the tactical genius himself

Simply because I used the models that I had at the time, and didn't particularly fancy shelling out just for Creed. He will naturally be making an appearance (much) later when the army has reached the 2k range.

L. Wrex

Excellent work, I really like the colour scheme.

My son has the Imperial Guard Cadian Battleforce still untouched, I will show him this and see if he can be inspired!

Just a quick update to let you know how I'm getting on.

I've started work on both the second PCS as well as the Command Chimera. Painting tanks is such a massive change from painting infantry, there's much more time and work involved! Also; Catachan Green is quite the thin paint, probably going to have to use maybe 2/3 layers to cover this effectively...

Pics will follow shortly!

L. Wrex