From SamuliS: Salamanders Tactical Company (66 points)

Yet another change in subject from me. This time to an even smaller scale with some old school Epic miniatures from the evil empire.

For me Epic Armageddon always seemed to be what Warhammer 40k should be. Large battles with massed armor and infantry on both sides battling it out over deserts, city scapes you name it. The ton of vehicles, monsters, flyers etc. that you nowadays see on the table top in 40k just doesn't seem right even if they might look cool. As a kid I never really got into Epic however as there wasn't much interest in the game in my circles and the limited hobby budget of a teenager couldn't stretch in too many directions. I still bought some stuff, but never really enough to build an army.

With a slightly more stable financial situation in my hands and a looming midlife crisis ahead I've been buying stuff that I was drooling over 10-20 years ago. And not surprisingly Epic is one of those subjects that I've indulged on. Over the last year or two I've bought (and ashamedly not painted) four Epic armies. Originally I set out to buy an Imperial Guard and an Ork army. Somewhere along the way I spotted a good deal on plastic Space Marines which would already yield me roughly a 3000 point force so I couldn't resist it. And on top of that last summer I went ahead and bought a painted Eldar army as well... Some might say I have a sickness, I'm just calling it excellent hobby taste.

The Guard and Orks have been waiting for inspiration as I need to pry most of the minis of their bases to get them on round washers that I'd rather use. But luckily all the space marines have been unassembled so I ended up starting the whole Epic project with them. I wanted to pick a force that was reasonably active in the Armageddon campaign and would have a different colour than the other forces. As I want the Orks to be comprised of Speed Freakz and Goffs and the Guard to be Steel Legion red, black and sand colours were already taken. I hate painting yellow and those blue smurfs are just frankly boring as hell, so it didn't really leave too many good choices. Luckily cleansing things with fire is always fun so going green with Salamanders was quite an easy choice.
 

The first part of the army are the 3 tactical marine units which is roughly the strength of a Space Marine Company. There's also the stands for a librarian, a chaplain and the supreme commander of the force with the relevant transports, bringing the entry to 95 infantry and 9 vehicles. These are roughly half of the army models wise, with a few Terminator squads and some heavy weapons and a titan left to bring the points up to 4000. Not sure if I'm going to paint any more of them during the challenge though as there isn't really no immediate need for them and they take quite a while to paint compared to the points they yield :)

I haven't painted any 6mm stuff for a while so there was a little learning curve again. Luckily a base colour with a heavy black wash worked out quite nicely. I wanted to add a little something to make them stand out so painted some flames on the shoulder pads. Pretty tricky on such a small scale and as the missus pointed out they do seem more like German flags than flames... Oh well, I'm not going to paint them over again.

Back to the brushes then. I really need to write down some painting plan instead of switching subjects all the time :) Way too many projects going on at the same time and none are really going ahead all that fast as I'm painting a unit or two per project at a time...

Yes! I salute your excellent "hobby selection" Samuli! Epic is indeed a wonderful game, and its disappearance from store shelves is a testament to the distance which the corp-tards running GW are able to insert their heads into their own rectums.  I do believe those ass clowns, without a hint of irony, are claiming they will "bring Epic back", but as always with GW, I will believe what they do, not what they say...

But enough of that blather! These look excellent. You've selected a fine Chapter for your troops, and the colours look excellent. While round bases are not my personal preference in Epic, your basing is fantastic and they certainly look much better than the little strips in use at the time of the game's disappearance. That is a well-earned 66 points for you - keep the old-time goodness coming. And let the enemies of the Emperor burn...

One final editorial note: painting plans, like spreadsheets, are for sheep and fools...keep up the variety!  In the end it's all one big "project", once you zoom out enough...