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Alright. Let's do this thing.



This isn't my first rodeo at doing a P&M Blog, I'm sure some of you may have seen my Blood Angels blog, but that's on hold for a while because a different army stole my heart. You can probably guess which one it is if you've read the title of this post.

My goals for this army is to paint something I can be proud of and is visually coherent. Also something that is viable in 10th edition, as my Iron Warriors army is playable but all over the place in terms of paintjobs and conversions. I won't have any of that this time around. The Guardsmen will be dressed in the same colours and the Tanks will have the same camo pattern, and vice versa.

But why Catachan? Why not Krieg or Valhallans or Praetorians or Mordians or god forbid Cadians?
Well, I don't know why, but something about the jungle aesthetic appealed to me. A lot of good action media features jungles and muscles. Rambo, Predator, Contra, and so on and so forth.

This army starts with a 1k game I played with my CSM back in the closing days of summer. Guy I played against (who will henceforth be known as DB) had a pretty nice Krieg army, with a couple Russes, the recent Kill Team Squad, and a Knight. I got my ass handed to me, but DB was pretty nice and it was a fun game, I still message him to this day, and hopefully a Guard v Guard batrep with him will be made soon. Eventually I got the Guard fever. I can't really consistently stick to one project for a long time, so I PM'd him for tips about starting Guard. He built this good, TAC 1k list that had some essential units, as well as being pretty thematic and well-built. Here it is:

1x Iron Hand Straken

1x Sergeant Harker

1x Sly Marbo

1x Platoon Command Squad

1x Tank Commander

3x Catachan Jungle Fighters Squad

1x Leman Russ Exterminator

1x Chimera

1x Hellhound

1x Scout Sentinel

It's a good start to this army, as any 'starter set' like the Patrols or the Battleforces are geared towards Cadians, and I'm not a big fan of the redesigns nor the aesthetics, so this is basically like my Firstborn blog. I will be using older minis, but in this case I might be converting some newer toys to fit with my Catachans, so it's not entirely the same.

Anyway, I managed to finish a couple of Guardsmen, but I haven't had much time due to real-life commitments.







It was my first real time layering skin, and despite his flaws I am pretty pleased with him. I could absolutely see myself fielding an army of these guys. I am pretty happy with the Camo pattern too. The jacket and trousers are both Castellan Green washed with Agrax Earthshade, but only the jacket was highlighted. In part because I was not going to spend hours highlighting around the Camouflage pattern for a single Guardsman, but also because It creates variation and looks more realistic, as if it has been faded, and having them be the exact same colour would be boring anyway.





I'll admit the layering on the Lasgun and strap is quite sloppy, but my lighting was not the best and again, these guys will be fielded en masse so small mistakes are not the end of the world.

I'll have the full squad basecoated soon enough, I hope this was interesting. Expect some updates soon.

Great work, you did something that I've never seen and think is a great idea... camouflage on the base!

I played guard for a long time, and I never thought of that.

Nice paint jobs, though I really dislike the Catachan models. They're old and oddly proportioned and don't really fit the modern 40k aesthetic.

That said, I can understand why some people like them. They look less like a formal army, and more like guerrilla fighters.

Going back to the topic of your paint jobs, I like how you used precise shading to bring out the musculature of the arms. Your color choice is also really good and reinforces the guerrilla aesthetic.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
Great work, you did something that I've never seen and think is a great idea... camouflage on the base!

I played guard for a long time, and I never thought of that.

Why, thank you very much! You have a great 'completely-loyal imperial guard' blog as well. The bases aren't fully finished yet. The idea that the camo kind of matched the base only came after I started work on it. After all, what are Catachans without jungle bases? That's like Krieg with grassy meadow bases, or Cadians NOT standing on floating space debris(bahahahahah)! I was just going to paint the bases green, because brown with no green plants on the base just looks like dirt, but just-green looks too cartoony. I hope to drybrush the base with a beige tone, to look more earthy and have a good mix of the two ideas I had in mind originally. Thank you for commenting! I will be sure to keep up with your loyalist blog as well.


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 ShadowsAndDust wrote:
Nice paint jobs, though I really dislike the Catachan models. They're old and oddly proportioned and don't really fit the modern 40k aesthetic.

That said, I can understand why some people like them. They look less like a formal army, and more like guerrilla fighters.

Going back to the topic of your paint jobs, I like how you used precise shading to bring out the musculature of the arms. Your color choice is also really good and reinforces the guerrilla aesthetic.

Thank you! I can understand your dislike towards the models, they are quite old and have a few mould-lines in awkward places, but for a competent painter, they are not hard to make look good. Practically anything's a step-up from the GW webstore pics. Just look at them, they're a sight for sore eyes.

Yeah, Catachans are fun because you can create variety in uniforms and dress just enough without making them look either like completely different troops or copy-pastes of the same two or three guys.

I actually didn't do any recess shading, I'm just a bit sloppy at layering. I just slapped Agrax over the whole mini, and tried to layer over the skin the best I could to some...varying results. A guy in my local-store made the same mistake too. I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing in regards to my painting now that I think about it. Hmm...

But thanks on that last part, I didn't want to deviate from the standard scheme too much, but I wanted to minimise buying new paints and just used what I had.


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 Lathe Biosas wrote:
Great work, you did something that I've never seen and think is a great idea... camouflage on the base!

I played guard for a long time, and I never thought of that.

Ignore what I said about the completely loyal guard blog, I got you mixed up with Doctor Spork, the genestealer cult guy. Oops. My mistake.

Painted a bit in the shop today, will post a WIP of the Sarge tomorrow

The painting on the first squad is coming along at a steady pace. In Ireland now, and managed to secure a Hydra tank and an OOP ‘Feodor Lassko’ Kill Team miniature. It’s basically the old Commissar mini but repackaged as a KT character. I’m sure he’s unusable in Kill Team now anyway, so no loss. Commissars are famously HATED by Catachan guardsmen (and for good reason, if you ask me!), so I have fun plans for this guy’s basing. Maybe a stray grenade or two found themselves near his feet. (Pins not included!)

I also magnetised the basing for almost all of my guardsmen so far. I am not paying extortionate amounts for foam transport with how many men I have, and foam isn’t good for metal minis anyway, and I will be fielding quite a few of those for sure!








I have also started using the barbed bracken plants on the bases. I thought they would be fiddly and fragile, but they are actually quite easy to work with. Just pop some super glue on the bottom of the stem and on the base, stick them together and you’re done. To be honest, the hardest part is finding where to stick them do they don’t hang over the base, and that’s a cakewalk in the first place.



I thought that the detailed plants would conflict with the cartoony ‘art style’ of the old minis but I think they look really good together!

But, but but, that s sly marbo???

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:
But, but but, that s sly marbo???

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

Yep! the man himself! i went for the metal one i found on ebay because the finecast one is well....finecast, and i'm just not a fan of how he loo-
did my door just creak for a minute there? And why do I hear the main theme from Predator playing? Oh lord, is that screaming? Oh god, please n-

Was about to cheer you happy new year, but looks like sly marbo ruined it before I could

I realise I haven't posted here in a while, but I've built and amassed quite a bit of stuff, so I'll post some pics of them. Mostly grey plastic and white metal. but I'm trying to paint when I can.



Here's the 'army' so far if you can even call it that.

To break up the monotony of the same flamer model multiple times in the exact same pose, I bought some old metals off ebay to use in squads. Generally the way it will go is 10 guys, some of which may be metal, mostly plastic., 7 lasguns (1 of them vox-caster) 1 sergeant with whatever weapons I give him (he only has one gakky profile anyway, so who cares?) and 1 flamer in plastic, 1 flamer/melta/special-weapon in metal or otherwise.


I've added a couple squads to the army, as well as my Harker proxy (just in time to have him removed from the codex! Yay!). I'm using the old catachan Lieutenant and he will be my in-lore leader, he just exudes so much badassery I can't just NOT have him as my Colonel.



I've also tried to theme my squads so I can tell who goes where. I don't know what it is, but when I paint a unit of minis, the troops MUST stay in that unit forever. it's overly logical and it doesn't really matter, but I prefer coherency, and this will help with that. For example, the Harker-proxy squad is mostly in 'Ranged' stances, shooting (because of Harker's bonus to shooting)


Straken's squad is mostly leftover minis, but as you can see because of Strak Man's bonus to melee, they will all have their knives drawn out or at least be in a running position. Especially like the guy running, holding his knife in the air. I can just imagine him screaming 'CHAAAAAARGEEE BOYS!!!!', I like it when miniatures show clear 'emotion' like that.


Commie's all built. Nothing else to report, he's green I guess.


''You alerted the Horde!''

don't f with Catachan men.


I've also put together some vehicles.


Here's my Chimera and a half-built Hydra. That Hydra assembly is just MISERABLE, though. I like the model but the build is just a slog.
I like the guy poking out the hatch on the Chimera, the head works really well, in my opinion.


The Leman Russ Executioner and a Scout/Armoured Sentinel. The Sentinel will play the role of a Scout until I can buy and strip the old Sentinels to use as Scouts, then it will be promoted to an Armoured Sentinel. Not Pictured: Tank Commander I'm currently putting together. Well, he's riding the Sentinel for now until I can put together his steel chariot of war. Still need to get a pointing arm for him though.


And here's the first squad. I'm steadily working through it, I've decided to try a new technique. I hate Batch Painting, but painting each guy one by one to completion will be the death of me, so I've decided to fully basecoat each individual guy, then shade them together and highlight together. Best of both worlds with none of the setbacks. You can kind of see what I mean on the sergeant there. I've also tried a basing scheme on them. Painting the bases green with no foliage looks too retro, but painting the base brown looks too much like mud when there is no foliage, so I decided to just shade the base with Agrax Earth Shade, then drybrush with Karak Stone and Krieg Khaki (Jeebus, what happened to names like 'Goblin Green' and 'Asurmen Blue'? Much simpler!) and it creates a good mix of both tones. Plus if they're near guys with plants on their bases it just looks like they're standing inbetween the jungle foliage and stuff. Maybe that made sense, I don't know. I will report back if anything interesting happens or when I finish the squad. Take care, dear reader. More to come soon.


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Leaving for my not-so-local warhammer shop tomorrow to paint and banter a bit with the regulars and the 2 feckers who work there. Great community center that shop is.

Some great progress here, love the Catachan minis despite their age!

 Olthannon wrote:
Some great progress here, love the Catachan minis despite their age!

Thanks! They really are nice models. They reflect the old art and lore of them pretty well, and you can build a diverse squad with many different heads and weapon poses out of the same kit and bits you used to make a different squad. Limitation really does breed creativity, tenfold with Guard regiments.

The tank commander is almost finished being built. He still needs a pointing arm. I gave him a heavy stubber but it blocked his sight and would have made it hard to paint him, so I just clipped it off. I end earlier this week, so I'm having more time to paint and build than usual. I've upgraded my Leman Russ executioner with some bits and roughed up and weathered the dozer blades for the TC and Chimera.

+++++ Would You Like To Know More? +++++

+++++ Updates Coming soon +++++

7 Guardsmen ready for priming


+++++ Updates soon +++++


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Guardsmen primed. I will paint more of the first squad for a couple hours tonight. I've got a bit of cola zero, Radio-X from GTA: San Andreas and FlashFM from Vice City, Ahoy just uploaded a new video, and I have the motivation of Predator, Death World by Steve Lyons, and Winter Assault. Wish me luck, brothers.

+++++ EVEN A MAN WHO HAS NOTHING CAN OFFER HIS LIFE +++++

I primed some more guardsmen today, and have been steadily working on basecoating my first squad. Almost done! Also made a conversion I'm super proud of.

I've also finally changed the name of this blog from 'BCowl's Catachan Blog' to what you currently see, the Catachan 69th 'Fighting Vipers' regiment. That's the number I decided on (for readily apparent naughty little boy reasons), and I should have the outline for the lore of my Colonel and regiment almost complete. I'm saving up for the Codex eventually, so until then I designed my own Datasheets in Word and have most of them printed out.

Nice start, I'll watch your progress with interest

Have you got the old codex catachan at hand?

 Pyroalchi wrote:
Nice start, I'll watch your progress with interest

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:
Have you got the old codex catachan at hand?

Thanks both! My next post will be some pictures of my army in WIP stage. I have a lot to update you on, so prepare for some proper updates to come.

As for the codex? I don't own the 3rd edition Codex: Catachans or the 3rd ed Guard one, but I've looked at some PDFs of them for in-lore army structure and force organisation, as well as painting inspiration. I fully intend on getting them both second-hand after I buy a few more squads of guardsmen and other necessary units, like ogryns and a hellhound or two.

Good start so far, look forward to seeing what you do with these guys

Hell yes! Love seeing a Guard army that isn't Cadian or Krieg. Not that I don't love those regiments but it's so refreshing to see more diversity on the table. Loving where this is going, can't wait to see more!

 Tek wrote:
Hell yes! Love seeing a Guard army that isn't Cadian or Krieg. Not that I don't love those regiments but it's so refreshing to see more diversity on the table. Loving where this is going, can't wait to see more!

Aw, thanks Tek! Loved your Sons of Medusa blog. Thanks for the support! More pics and minis are coming soon, i promise.

Also reading your message while hearing this song is peak friday night Dakkadakka



anyway, next AANP will be photos




Painted this guy's mouth (as a flesh coloured one will just look strange in the final pics)




tried experimenting with darker skin tones on my guardsmen (using the fittingly named Catachan Flesh). I was working on the second one today, he's in a really cool but trickly pose to paint, so a large part of the process will be fixing mistakes (more so than usual)


The full WIP of Squad 1


WIP of Squad 2

WIP of Squad 3 (who are in desperate need of more melee men)

and I ordered a second-hand Command Squad off Ebay, having the poses I wanted to build, the right loadout, and are built incredibly well for ebay secondhands made this a miracle purchase (the other three specialists are in a jar of isopropyl as they were covered in paint)


I rebased them on 28s and upgraded the plasma gunner and commander with pouches from the infantry kit on their asses, the gunner got a knife and I gave the commander (who was looking cool but quite bland in comparison to the squad) a backpack from the Quar range (I intend on doing a P&M blog on those soon, stay tuned!) and I find it looks really good! What do you think, dear cherished reader? I'd love to hear your opinion and criticism.

and I'm returning to the Hydra build.


I built the crewman aiming the gun a while ago

but his companion was built straight from the kit, and he looked odd with his cadian helmet next to his brother so I clipped off his head and arm and converted him to be a cool, charismatic Catachan.


and now... on to the Big Kahuna....











...my Catachan Tank Commander!
Oh MAN, I am chuffed with how his build turned out!
So many little conversions... let me break it down.

Okay, so the commander himself, his torso is from the stock LR kit, his head is from the Chimera kit, his Knife (a twist on the 'Drive me closer i want to hit them with my sword! meme) came from the standard Catachan infantry kit, his pointing arm (who a younger guy very graciously donated, thanks Luis) from the weapons team (which is FINALLY back in stock hell yeah! the west is saved! we are so back! ahem.... anyway, continuing the blog in 3, 2, 1)

The Plow is from the vehicle upgrade kit (which is horrendously overpriced for a kit i can just get a recast of), the aquila on the turret is from the upgrade kit, the bedroll near the melta is also from the upgrade kit, the HK missile came from the Chimera kit, the demolition pack in photo 5 is a vox-pack, which came from the stock Catachan kit. The track guards are from the vehicle upgrade kit, the easily-missable grenade and pouch are from a horus-heresy space marine kit (I think MK3). It's hard to see but the knife sheath behind the missile is from the stock Catachan kit too, the pouches on the other side are from a tactical squad kit, and finally the Heavy Stubber (which I believe I mentioned a few posts ago the offical IG one blocked the sight of the commander too much so I replaced it with this one) came from the second model I ever painted, a Kastelan Robot. It was just a small thing I cut off, and I like it, because it's a pretty badly painted piece being reused on a mini I like, and if the Emperor wills it, it shall be done.

This is pretty easy to miss, but I found this cool (but too short) Catachan blog from a few years ago, and the guy chose to cut an aquila transfer in half and place it on both sides of the armour surrounding the lascannon and I really wanted to use this piece (from the HH Land Raider Proteus kit) right here:



on the tank, so in a bout of inspiration I decided to carefully cut it in half and glue it in the same manner, which I really like the look of!

Thank you all for reading and for the incredibly kind support! (I have read every single message you lovely people have posted, and each one motivates me to work on this army a lot more.) more updates soon to come!

+++++ WE STOP FOR NO ONE +++++

Love the feel of these guys,,, Good job on the camo paint work, they have a real gritty feel,

I'm back with some news to report, squad 1 have all been shaded and I'm highlighting them on-and-off when I get the chance.
My other three command men are have had their paint stripped and after a thorough wash, I have them glued down on their bases, awaiting some sand, plants. and a prime.




I also tried my hand at converting some shotguns, because shotguns are cool and manly and so are Catachans.



I cut off the front-end of some lasguns and tried gluing on the lasguns from the lasgun array on a Chimera. I find they work pretty well as shotguns visually, because the of the thicker pipes and if you turn them upside down it looks a bit less like a lasgun and more like its own thing. Cutting off the magazines to make space for... what's the part where the shells slot in? I forget. I probably won't be converting a forend (the pumping part for people not in the know) as I think they sell the look of shotguns well enough. These probably won't have any gameplay purpose, they might be cool to put on tank-riders or weapons team spotters, and definitely a priest or two for the FAITH Father Garcia look
I'm going into the shop tomorrow to paint and pick up another Infantry squad I ordered, as well as picking up some spare shotgun pieces from a couple guys I know.

I will update you guys as I progress with this army.
Cheers.

+++++ FEAR ME, BUT FOLLOW +++++

It is awesome to see the old guys in action keep up the hard work!

When you paint up the clergy, you should add copious amounts of mud to their robes, to show the difficulty regular guys have in the jungle.

As for the heavy armor, I feel that the Astra Militarum would take a page from history, and quote the American general in Vietnam: General Westmoreland when he said, "The first rule of jungle warfare is: Remove the jungle."

hey great shotguns ima still the idea at some point lol

Don't have any images to share now (feel a little bad about that) but my first squad is almost fully complete, about 8 guys just need a little bit of highlights on the gunmetal and headbands/ a bit of hair (I'll probably get that taken care of tomorrow while I'm in the shop) and when I eventually paint up a batch of metal reinforcements to fill gaps in squads they'll be a squad of 10. I'm painting a character afterwards, then my command squad, then another infantry squad. Which character am I painting? You'll just have to wait and see! Bwahahahahaha!

Command Squad, all based and ready for a prime.

Nice! Bat reps when with your blood angels allied to these muscular vietnam men?

How many points have you built for this force?

 Quixote wrote:
How many points have you built for this force?

I have about 1000 points, thank you for asking, I need to do a count of the overall cost when I finish some units. I have a few kitbashes half-built. like a proxy for a certain kind of squad that only has four members, or a single weapons team, but those will be finished soon anyways. Thank you for your reply!


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 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:
Nice! Bat reps when with your blood angels allied to these muscular vietnam men?

A guy I know who I see around the shop sometimes let me join a messager group with a couple of his friends and there are talks about a campaign potentially happening, and you know how crusades work sometimes...
My knee-jerk reaction to this was 'oh god I really should paint my Angels more' and 'how would that even work in 10th's watered down allied rules?' but hey, who knows? It's definitely a possibility....