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Back when 6th edition 40k was but a glimmer in daddy GW's eye, I picked up a tourney-oriented Emperors Children army.

Shortly after purchase, 5th edition was released and the Chaos Space Marines Codex came out, rendering all of my Noise Marine bits essentially useless. My list, and my purple, lust filled heart, was obliterated just a few short months after purchase (I painted very very slowly in those days).

The army, which had received no more work than being removed from it's sprues and carefully separated into the bits box was placed in a dark corner to be forgotten. Like the One Ring. Sort of.

Anyway, an entire edition came and passed, and then there was 6th.

Noise Marines are finally useful again.

It was time to open up the box and release the legion from it's prison.

Quite a number of months later, I'm at the point where painting is due to commence. I have some time off work next week, and I plan to get a huge chunk of the army finished up.

For anyone curious to the actual size, see the spoiler tag.


And the moment you've been waiting for (maybe). The pics. All pre-undercoat (I'm typing this up as I wait for the first stages to dry). A lot of it is stock and boring, but I'll outline a few of the interesting bits.

























Full Metal Prince - Be'Lakor. Bought this guy years ago. Always planned to have him in the army, and he's a beautiful mini.

Other Prince - Hah! At one time this was going to be a Khorne Greater Daemon with Chainsaws for arms. £100 on parts back when GW still had a bitz store, it was a project that started out great then hit a wall. It was then relegated to 'the drawer', where I have no small fortune worth of models waiting for paint/completion. Kind of an idea graveyard.

The base model is one of the old Inquisitor scale arco-flaggelent guys. Wings from Galrauch the chaos dragon. Most everything else sculped on. Pillars are an old FW item. No clue if you can still get them.

Mounted Lord - I wanted a Slaanesh Steed that didn't look like it would collapse under the weight of power armour. Happened upon the Gorebeast from the Chaos Warrior Chariot when I was looking for suitable steeds, and finally found what I was looking for. Once I had the bits, a few days were spent frustratedly chopping and cutting to get the legs from the DV Champion to fit and everything to sit right.

Have to say I'm pretty pleased with this guy. He looks suitable killy.

Snake Lord - This guy has been sitting assembled for a long long time. 6+ years maybe. He was the first model I converted for the original EC list, but when 5th came out and crapped all over the army, he got boxed with the rest of the stuff. Snake bit from the Warhammer Slaanesh mounted Lord. Chirurgeon backpack. Assorted other bits I don't remember.

Decimators - Everytime I look at these guys, the words that pop into my head are 'Los Pollos Hermanos'. I don't know if I've been watching too much breaking bad, or if the nickname just fits, but they'll probably become known as the chicken brothers. I think I managed to get poses for them that avoided the legs looking utterly stupid. Cannons will represent Heavy Conversion Beamers, because what's not to like about a 72" range AP1, S10 Pie Plate.

Palatine Blades - These will either be used as Warp Talons or Possessed, or as actual Palatine Blades once I get some more heresy era stuff. Probably won't be painted in this upcoming session since I'll be aiming for something between my actual 40k EC colour scheme, and the original heresy era colours. The idea being that for 40k games they can represent a contingent of once elite Legion warriors who lend a hand to the warband once in a while with their Fire Raptor support. Jump packs were given a little plasticard trim to tie them into the armour design. For 30k they'll just straight represent Palatine Blades with jump packs.

Fire Raptor - Not much added to it really. Some plasticard trim to match it into the Palatine Blades, and some EC icons. Beast of a model. Looking forward to seeing it finished, but again it'll probably not be done during this upcoming wave of stuff.

It's nice to finally be making progress on this one. Stand by for updates over the coming weeks!

Pretty sweet army. You have a whole lot to paint. That Snake Lord is awesome. I think the Fabius Bile backpack totally sells it. You would get a lot more responses if you posted your images straight to Dakka. Most viewers will not take the time to click a simple link and your imgur album could probably be set up a little better, but I know those images are huge.

Turns out the images aren't as huge as I thought they were. Imgur must compress them a little on upload.

You're quite right that the gallery format is a little unwieldy. My main concern was for people on slower connections having to wait ages for the page to load.

I've edited the original post to include the pics. Thanks!

Basecoating begins!

Waiting for the airbrush to cool down a little before continuing. First layer is Naggaroth Night from around 45°. Next and final airbrush stage will be Xereus Purple from almost directly overhead. The objective being to give a soft zenithal highlight to everything, yet still leave the crevices and shadowed areas dark. Once all that is done, I'll have to apply a purple/black wash to everything by hand to deepen the updward facing recesses, and, depending on how that looks, I might end up hitting it all with a very final airbrushed layer of Zereus Purple to bring the upper body highlights back up a touch. I'd prefer not to have to go through another airbrushing stage after the washes, but we'll see how it goes. It won't be that much trouble to do - it's more the hassle of pulling out the airbursh kit each time I move to a new unit (because applying a wash to 60something models at once would drive me batty).

Some quick camera phone photo's so you can see progress and get an idea of what I mean by the zenithal highlighting.

Looking forward to seeing this develop. You have some fantastic conversions in there.

Final highlight layer applied.

I've run out of Xereus Purple (2 pots to apply highlight layer to everything), so if I can get away without having to go back over things once the washes are on, I will. Otherwise I'll just have to buy more.

Images straight out of the camera, so filesize might be a bit chunky. Sorry dodgy-internet victims!

The plan is to get one unit of 10 (or two units of 5) plus a vehicle done each day. That will put me at 6 days painting time for the stuff that's basecoated so far, and a bit extra to do the characters and Raptors.

If anyone is wondering where the Fire Raptor and Palatine Blades went, they'll be done at a later date. I suspect I may acquire some more Heresy era stuff, so I'll want to save all that so it can be done in one block. Same with the daemon bits; They'll all get done in one sweep as well. Doing it this way gives me a lot more consistency with the colours across the army, since I can spend an afternoon airbrushing everything in that block, and then it's done, so no future colour matching to worry about.

Anyway, pics!













(Counts as) Huron:


Lord - Shows the zenithal lighting effect pretty well compared to some of the other photos.










Some additional shots of the scratchbuilt daemon prince.




That's about as much as I plan on doing today. Tomorrow I'll pick a random vehicle/unit block and get to work!

So the weekend didn't quite go to plan.

I forgot I had things to do on Saturday, so didn't really make any progress then, and Sunday was a pretty lazy day all told.

I've been chipping away at the Decimator though, and it's finally finished (minus the base, which will be completed when I batch-base the entire army at the end of the project).







I'm pretty pleased with it; feels like I've hit the mark I was aiming for with the atmosphere (dark, gritty, and battleworn), so it bodes well for the rest of the models. Took a little longer due to having to feel my way around the best way to go about getting the exact effect I wanted (I'd done a test marine, but I made small changes to the scheme since then). Probably around 4-5 hours total. A lot of time spent waiting for washes to dry, and much of the actual painting time was spent on the gold, which is always a pain in the ass.

I'll make a start into the first Noise Marine squad a little later tonight, and hopefully put myself in a position where I can get it finished tomorrow, plus another vehicle, or make a start into a fresh squad. We'll see how the notion takes me.

I'll probably not get quite as much done in the coming week as I'd hoped, but I'll at least get a significant portion of the power armour stuff out of the way, and then I can work on a squad or vehicle each week until I have some more time off work to spend clearing out another chunk.

That deci looks great! I like the white face and the hot pink effects provide a nice pop of color.

Awesome, keep it up like the conversions

Now this is a nice breath of fresh, fragrant Slaaneshi air. I can tell that you've got an appreciation of the finer, purpler things in life. One thing I'm left wondering about is the daemonettes. You've got the old-skool metal ones that rocked, but why not convert the new plastics to match the all-female aesthetic that the old ones had? I've worked on the newer plastics, and it's actually not hard to remove the armor/clothing using a hobby knife and some sandpaper to give them a "nude" aesthetic, and the second breast is easily added with a bit of GS. Just my own $.02, but then I tend to go overboard with boobs in my armies.


One thing I simply must know: Where did you get all of those columns? I'm using a ruined urban/temple theme for my Dubstep Tau, and the columns would help tremendously.

Man those Obliterators a SICK. Where are they from? Oh and sweet use on the old Inquisitor scale Arco-Flagellent for your Daemon Prince, I might just steal this Idea lol

Thanks folks!

Pillars are an old Forge World product. I have no idea if they still sell them. I had mine sitting in a drawer for over half a decade, so I wouldn't have the first idea where to even look for them on the FW website these days.

Oblits are from HiTech Miniatures. A little more pricy than the GW versions, but far far better models. I figured I'd spend as much scratchbuilidng my own as it would cost to buy them, so it was worth the money IMO.

Painting so much gold SUCKS.

First Noise Marine squad finally finished. Quite far behind where I'd hoped to be at this point. I'll probably only get a couple more squads done over the next 4-5 days before I'm back to work. I won't be anywhere near the point I expected to be at, but it's not really that big a deal. It's progress at least, and I should still have about 1k-1.5k points finished up over the next few days, which isn't too shabby for a fortnights work.

Pics!








Pretty pleased with these guys. Again using the glowy bits and helmets to draw the eyes away from the more basic job on the armour. I think the couple of little runes dotted around each of their armour helps add a bit of interest and break the similarity between each of the squad members.

Next stop, Oblits or maybe a Havoc squad. I'm leaning towards Oblits because there will be less gold involved :p


edit: And I just now noticed a few of the cabling details that I missed. Oops! Won't take long to get those fixed up.

These look beautiful! Very well done...

I agree they look excellent. THe gold may have been a pain, but it really makes them pop.

Great looking Noise Marines. I love the burnished gold and the white on pink highlights. How do you plan to base them?

Wow, those noise marines turned out beautifully! Really like the colour scheme.

Thanks for the comments folks!

Basing-wise, I'm thinking of black sand with some dead grass dotted around. I don't want to go overly colourful, so keeping the bases muted and unobtrusive will be the objective.

They look crazy awesome!

Obliterators complete!









I went for a green glow rather than pink to represent their Nurgliness. Similarly, when I get to the Berserkers I'll make any glowy bits on them Red/Orangey.

Other than that, the armour still matches in to the rest of the force, so they shouldn't look out of place on the table. Skin was fun to do - Mostly a lot of washes and a little drybrushing between random stages. I just hope I don't have to repeat it at any point, because there's no way I'll be able to match it again :p

I'd guess maybe 3-4hours per model? I gave them some extra attention because they're pretty individual mini's, so they'll serve as quasi centre-pieces for the army.

I might make a start into one of the Havoc squads tomorrow, but I'm unlikely to get them completed. I'm back to work on Tuesday, so I'll just have to find a few hours here and there between my working weeks to keep plugging on. I'll probably take some more time off in January, so will hopefully get another chunk dealt with then.

Nice oblits! Green was a great choice.

Slaanesh is my favorite Chaos god, so I'm thrilled that you're giving these guys such beautiful paintjobs! The scheme is subdued, but still very eye-catching and very obviously Slaaneshi. Hope you keep making good progress, if you keep it up this will be one heck of a log to follow.

I remember bookmarking your hero forge site on my old computer. I'm glad I get to see your work again!

Progress will slow down a bit for the next few days since I'm back to work tomorrow. Hopefully I'll be able to find some time near the weekend to maybe get one of the havoc squads close to finished. The whole project will be on a bit of a slow burn for a few weeks until I can take some more time off to get another chunk out of the way, but that's not really a problem.

I'm pretty pleased with progress over the last 2 weeks or so. Not as far along as I'd have liked to be, but I'm splashing a little extra time onto the models compared to normal, so I should have expected that.

If I can get a Havoc squad finished up over the weekend I'll have cleared 1k points in a little over a fortnight, so that's still pretty good going.

Regarding the website - I'm ashamed to say I haven't updated it in a long long time. I didn't really consider how much of a pain in the ass it would be to update when I created it, so I need to get back to it at some point and revamp a few things. I've essentially moved all my gallery features over to facebook, which I was having to update regularly anyway, and because it's a much smoother process. The website has an awful lot of outdated information on it now :/

So it's been quite a while since the last update.

Christmas got in the way of things a lot more than I expected, and since then I've been so busy during my days off work that I haven't really had much time to sit down and make progress.

I finished the Havocs a few weeks ago, but this is the first chance I've really had to get some pics.

Opted to run a stripe up the middle of the helms, rather than fully whiting it out, for a little variety. Also because some of the sides of the helms would have been a real pain in the ass to access :p



I also just finished up the second squad of Noise Marines. Nothing really new here. Half white helms to make it easier to tell which squad is which on the table, in the event they end up embroiled in the same combat together. I kinda like how the runes on the other halves of the helms worked in.






And finally, progress so far:



That brings me up to I think around 1.1k points painted so far. Next stage is to try and get all the daemons done in one fell swoop. They should run in pretty fast since it'll mostly be a lot of washes/drybrushing, similar to the mutated arms on the Havocs. If I can get the daemons done in a timely fashion, I'll be sitting at around 2.5k points painted, including a CSM commander that I'll find a few hours to get done at some point during or after the daemonic horde.

Not as far along as I'd have liked to be at this point, but progress is progress!

I've always found myself to by a Nurgle/Tzeentch fanboy, but over the past few months I've been converting to Slaanesh. Thanks to you and others on dakka, that coffin has been nailed.

Love these guys, and can't wait to see more!

I really love I mean really really love the light purple scroll detail on the weapons and the paldrons. Kudos. Go team purple!