From StuartL - The Boys in Blue at The Hall of Heroes (277 Points)

Hello again everyone.

Today I'm submitting my entry for the final Chamber of Challenge on my to do list, The Hall of Heroes. Unlike some of the other chamber themes where it was tricky to find something that fits, I actually had a lot of options here. When I considered that this was likely to be the last stop on my journey, and what I wanted to achieve in terms of models painted, I decided that the best option was to go big for this one.

A while back I posted up a bunch of Warhammer 30,000 World Eaters and explained at the time about how I enjoyed the setting and how I got started with it. I'm not going to go back over that here and just jump straight in to posting up the minis I painted. One of my targets for this challenge was to get the core of my 30K collection finished up so that I can start to play more games once social contact becomes a thing again. As I had started my World Eaters, I needed suitable opponents for them on the table. With the title of the post, it should come as little surprise that I have painted up Ultramarines.

As the starting point for the army, I painted up 20 Tactical marines, or two squads in game terms. To support them I added a 5-man Tactical Support Squad and a 5-man Heavy Support Squad, armed with Melta-guns and Missile Launchers respectively.

To add a little more punch to the force, I added a squad of Seekers, a specialist team of Snipers/Assassins with the role of hunting down the enemy commanders and eliminating them. For those of you familiar with 40K, you may notice that these guys are in different armour to the other figures. I have used a mix of Mk.V torsos with Mk.VI armour to make them stand out a bit more on the table.

Finally, I built some close combat troops. The Ultramarines list allows them to field a unique unit called the Locutarus Storm Squad. While I prefer to use all plastic minis, these guys needed some extra bits and pieces such as resin jump packs, though I used the cheaper options from Spellcrow, rather than the official Forge World models.

I don't have a lot of vehicles for the setting yet, but I did get an old Rhino APC from eBay ages ago. The front of the Rhino had a lot of junk stuck to it, and when I tried to remove it most of the front hull went with it. A raid on my bits box later and I had enough to repair it after a fashion. By adding some guns to the front along with some extra armour, I cobbled together a tank hunter. A dreadnought was also added to the pile for extra fire support.

Finally, any force needs some officers to lead it, so I painted up a Tech-marine and a Captain. The Tech-marine is covered in Ultramarine Icons, so I could either use him for this army, or spend hours grinding down the metal details. The Captain has a resin torso, (also Spellcrow) and a plastic Jump Pack from a Blood Angels kit. 

All of the minis had transfers applied where necessary. Unlike the issue I had previously with the decals for the World Eaters, I had some suitable sheets in my collection for these guys. Luckily their insignia don't change much between 30K and 40K, and there are some 30K insignia available for them in the boxed sets I bought. 

Anyone familiar with the Warhammer setting will probably agree that despite all the stick Ultramarines get for being the poster-boys of the game, the lore does tend to depict them as being heroes, so probably suitable enough for the entry for this chamber. However, I did have one more model that I wanted to add, particularly because I have had it for ages. When I first became interested in the setting, way back when, GW had stated that they would never, ever do anything for the Horus Heresy (except Epic, but that had long since died as a game system anyway), and they especially would never release models or rules for the Primarchs. Luckily for me, other companies could see the value in making models for them and selling them. I spent a fair bit of money with a company called Kabuki Models, a small boutique company that appears to have closed it's doors (some minis are still available from Levelup Hobby). One of the figures I picked up was an unofficial figure for the Primarch of the Ultramarines Legion. The original head was tiny compared to the rest of the figure, so I substituted a standard GW head. Even without the base, the figure is taller than a standard GW marine mini, with the troops above only coming up to his shoulders. 

So, as the submission for the Hall of Heroes I submit The Avenging Son, The Master of Ultramar, The Blade of Unity, The Victorious, Robute Guilliman, (unofficial) Primarch of the 13th Legion Astartes.

By my count, that is 42x 28mm minis, 1x 40mm mini and 2x 28mm vehicles, plus the chamber for a total of 277 points. For my side duels, 250 of those points go towards the GW minis tally and there are 36 skullz painted on the minis. As I have already submitted a Warhammer 30K themed entry for the Squirrel contest, these don't add anything to that count.

My running Duels totals:

GW Points - 1266

Skullz - 492

Squirrels - 18

Fabulous! A points bomb! Just a few more of these and we'll be on our way to reaching the grand target.

I know very little about the Warhammerverse, but I do understand that your Primarch does have a rather uncharitable nickname.

That's 277 points in your bag for this entry.

Tamsin