Guard 2.0

[mozznstein]

Ladies and Gents,

I am working on the second iteration of a guard army. Guard is the first and only army I have played. What can I say, I have a soft spot for the common man and big guns. They seem to fit my play style but boy are they a bugger to paint. Once upon a time I had 500 points and change of guard. Guided more by my desire to paint individual models than to build a workable army, I ended up with 1850 points worth of models that varied wildly in quality and design and didn't even function well as an army.

Looking back on several years of work i was unsatisfied and I stripped them all down. Only the standard bearer in the image attached below still survives.

I had initially adopted a variation of the Cadian 8th color scheme but that was hardly applied across the board. Additionally, since I was a model maker before I was a 40k fan I used paints and techniques that were pretty hit or miss on figures. The longer I was in the hobby, the less interested I became in my army. I started painting models for the sake of painting models. While the practice helped me learn some things, the disparate designs didn't make an attractive looking army or even one that fought well. A good example of this being the stormtrooper models I converted from regualar Cadians seen here on CMON.

Anyhow, to make a long story short, this thread is going to be about the new army I am working on. This is mainly to keep myself motivated and hopefully get some feedback from you guys. More posts and pics to follow, but if you look in my CMON gallery there is an image there that started it all.

Next up, the basic feel I wanted for my army, how I wanted to communicate that in the models and fluff, and some more pictures.

[mozznstein]

Ok, so here's my gripe with the Imperial Guard as an army. I don't like the concept of cannon fodder. Don't laugh. What I mean is that I don't like row after row of guardsmen with exactly the same pose and equipment. Even the most well equipped armies don't look that uniform. Besides, if you just use the standard Cadian, you look just like everyone else.

When painting for fun I picked up a few fun human models, even from outside GW's products lines. I made some Khador Widomakers from Privateer Press, picked up a couple Reaper figures, and things like that. Most often I had no aspiration to make them into a guard army, there isn't just a whole lot of room in the imperial guard for an elf archer with purple boots.

It wasn't until I made this mini(attached below) that I really started having fun with my Guard army again. The original sculpt of the model wasn't really like that originally but I made some adjustments to the weapon and clothing. I just wanted to have one distinctive model in my army at least. at the time, she was the best looking miniature I'd ever painted. However cool she was, she didn't match my army.

I am not so OCD as to build an entire army around one model, but she was pretty good inspiration. I won some store credit at a tournament and I picked the Tanith Ghost's box just because they were some pretty cool models. When considering how to paint them I looked to my recent psyker for inspiration. and the models attached below are the result.

I really like these guys, however, the Tanith models are even more limited than the Cadians. They have on special weapon and no heavies and only about 7 or 8 sculpts to build an entire army. It would be attack of the clones all over again, only not quite as sucky as Episode 2.

[Archlord101]

Those are amazing, I wish I could paint as well as that.
Tell me, how did you the skin, and what colour undercoat did you use?

[Sister Bluebird]

That is an awesome psyker! And the Guardsmen aren't too shabby either!!

In the first pic does the guy on the far left have an autogun?

[Andusciassus]

I am really impressed. I think your earthy colours look really good and the skin is really, really nice. But what really caught my eye was the subtle conversions. The things done to the heads of the guards really lift them up a notch over the other well painted guard armies I've seen.
Great work and please, let us see more pics of your army.

[mozznstein]

First of all, thanks for the input guys, makes it easier to keep going, I think you will be pleased with the results. More pictures to come in the next few days.

@ Archlord101: I primed her in black but I tried something different for the first flesh tone. When I started painting I didn't know a whole lot about color. To shade I would just add black to base coat, highlight once with the original color and add another highlight with white added. This works somewhat, but all your models end up looking a bit grey. A technique I adopted for the psyker model, and all my models since then is to transition from one darker color to a lighter color.

All that to say, the base color for that model was a deep sunburned tan. Really ruddy and dark. I was trying to get some different shades of skin in my army without too much effort (yup I even have a black guardsman). I then started mixing the leftover ruddy tan with a lighter flesh tone and water and slowly layered on the highlights to get the end result.

Colors have to be somewhat exaggerated to stand out on a gaming table so particularly when I do flesh colors I try to start out with something a tad outlandish, like a sickly green tan or even a purple brown mix. Strictly speaking it isn't realistic but the variety it gives the figures gives the impression of realism which is more important. I don't want my guard to look like clones, one of the ways I can mix things up is in flesh tone. Though to be fair not all my guys are going to get such special treatment :-/

@Sister Bluebird: Actually that was one of my first conversions before I knew much of the fluff so I was just trying to come up with a sniper rifle. However, I usually played him as a vet with a normal lasgun because I haven't had much luck with sniper rifles.

@ Andusciassus: You hit on the thing I think is most important to what I am trying to do. All the little conversions are where an army gets a lot of its character. Real humans have more traits in common than traits that distinguish them. If I can come up with one little difference on each model I think people will get an impression of individuals forming the ranks and not just little bits of plastic or metal. For me, again, the goal is the impression of realism.

Just for kicks, I've attached a picture of one of my early practice models. This one represents a change in how I paint. Until The Piper I would pain a model and then give it a wash, but after perusing CMON and a couple tutorials I tried to progressively shade the model with layers of paint thinned with water. I did all my shading by adding white to the base color. Notice how that makes this model's colors seem very pastel or foggy. More pics here.

[mozznstein]

Ok, time to show a bit of what I plan to build. This list is 1500 point all comers list. It is pretty basic on the whole. I am trying to get at least a bare bones list assembled so that I can add inquisitors, Grey Knights and veterans to mix things up at the 1850 and 2000 point level. The list probably needs more AT fire power. I feel fairly confident about the anti horde capabilities of the army, goodness knows there are enough template weapons in this list. I am a lot more concerned about monstrous creatures and demon princes - things with low saves and lots of wounds. (alas... for the old force weapon rules)

I know this isn't an army list forum so I won't go into all of the reasons for the unit choices, I mainly wanted everyone to see what I was working on. The list is color coded as follows:

Green = complete
Yellow = in progress (more than fifty percent painted)
Red = assembled (less than fifty percent painted)

Heroic Senior Officer
power weapon
iron discipline
veteran
company standard
mortar
psyker
Honorifica
Force weapon 163

fire support
Lascannon x3 110

Junior Officer
bolt pistol
power weapon
iron discipline
mortar 61

squad 1
plasma
ML 85

squad 2
plasma
ML 85

squad 3
plasma
ML 85

armored fist
vet sarge
melta gun
chimera
multilaser
heavy bolter
smoke
extra armor 169

Leman Russ
lascannon
heavy bolters
extra armor 170

Leman Russ
3x heavy bolters
extra armor 160

Demolisher
3x heavy bolters
extra armor 170

Sentinel x2
lascannon
extra armor 120

Hellhound
smoke
extra armor 123

You'll notice that every vehicle is complete. I haven't posted any pictures yet but I will soon. My background is in vehicle painting so they turned out much better than my early guardsmen. However, the scheme really doesn't match the new look of my guard very well. I am tempted to remake all of the vehicles too but I just don't think I have it in me to do that.