Monday 13 December 2021

Black Legionaries - Close Assault Veterans.



"A great storm of darkness will descend upon the Cadian Gate. A tide of destruction will sweep aside the naive usurpers of the Corpse Emperor and the servants of the Dark Ones shall reclaim the citadel's thereupon..."

Legionary Kaal turned away from the Dark Apostle preaching his ravings and strode through the gathering throng. Here in one of the assembly bays on the Vengeful Spirit the forces of the Despoiler were gathering to pay homage to their warlord and work themselves into a frenzy for the coming assault.

Bludgeoning a pair of beastmen out of his path as he walked, he focused upon the preparations which had taken their Warmaster centuries, oaths recalled, favours offered and repaid, misdirection and misinformation.
Even now Lord Khiron had surrendered himself to the Imperial Lapdogs and was spreading misinformation to them, weakening their resolve before the coming storm...so he had been told.

Kaal thought it a fools errand, better to face the enemy with bolter and blade in hand then be tortured for information and executed.
Though he was not a member of the command echelon's, so what did his opinion matter.
The Warmaster had his plans, Ygethmor had his plans, even his own Lord had plans, inscrutable though all of them were.

Twenty minutes later Kaal entered his squads arming chamber, he had told the rest of them to remain there and arm themselves, as he knew there would be nothing would be beneficial for them at the moment.

Aurgeth sat with his back to a storage crate, monotonously banging his head against the lid, he had done that since being wounded during the twelfth crusade.
Ereyan and Morcoth dueled each other at the rear of the chamber, half shrouded in darkness, the lights glinted off their armours trim, making them seem like shadows come to life, chainswords sparked as they met.

Malwyn, his second in command looked up from the dataslate he had been reviewing as Kaal entered, his baroque armour growling with freshly serviced servo-motors.

"Well?" Malwyn asked, "Anything of note from the Apostle?"

"The usual raving of a madman" Kaal replied.

"Show me a sane man around here, and I'll show you a liar!" Malwyn said, replying with humour.

"Are we ready?" Kall asked, and the entire chamber fell silent. The screeching of chainswords died off as Ereyan and Morcoth turned towards the conversing pair. Even Aurgeth ceased his eternal thumping to look directly at his warleaders.

"Yes, we're ready, has there been word for when the assult will begin? Everything around the ship is coiled to the breaking point!" 

Somewhere deep within the ship Klaxons began ringing and an automated vox message rang out "Helbrute escape. Helbrute escape. Helbrute escape".

Kaal reached out and shut off the internal ship vox and turned back to his squad.

"Soon".

*****

As we move on further through the month, it's not necessarily a race to get stuff finished, but I know that I'll probably be gifted some more gear at the end of the month (is there a certain day approaching?) and aim to. Lear some stuff off the painting table.

Also, I aim to make a good start on the forces I'll need for "Project EoT" so this is a post going forwards with that.

Legionary Kaal and the beginnings of a squad of Close Assault Chaos Space Marines and the Hellbrute 'Tarn the Tormented' are my first experiments with the Black Legion colour scheme.


Sure on the surface, it's just black and gold with a little detailing, but not all Black paints are equally good when finished and I wanted a different look to these miniatures when compared to my Deathwatch for example.

The Chaos marines have a basecoat of Corvus Black as this has a very dark grey finish, not entirely black like Abaddon Black for example.
Gold trim is Retributor Armour (to get a good solid colour), metals are Leadbelcher and the red started at Khorne Red.

At this point the entire model, including the base which is Mournfang Brown to lock on the sand, is washed with Agrax Earthshade.
This I find darkens even the Corvus Black in the recesses where it wouldn't on the pure black. It also weathers all the trim, metal and shades the red areas.
Final steps are to highlight the red with Mephiston Red to draw the eye to details and then finish the bases with my usual Baneblade Brown, Ushabti Bone drybrushed and paint the base rim Abaddon Black.


Legionary Kaal and his squad started off as spares from a group I bought from Mirfield Miniatures, a shop which specialises in second hand Warhammer.
I got fifteen chaos marines for £18 which is a very good deal. Two already came with chainswords, so it was a quick matter to clip off a couple of Boltguns and a Missile Launcher and add spare parts from some Raptor Sprues they sent in the box with them.


'Tarn the Tormented' is an old Dark Vengeance (the 6th and 7th edition starter box) model which I have had kicking around the hobby gear for years and not known what to do with.
There is a lot of flesh on this model compared to the others, but the armour and trim were painted as the marines. The fleshy areas are just Cadian Fleshtone washed with Earthshade instead of Fleshshade. To add interest to this model, the cables buried in its flesh are Kabalite Green rather than Mephiston Red as they blended too much into the skin tone.

These models clear two boxes and a line for Seventy points and a new total of One Thousand and Thirty points.

I'll post more on Project EoT,towards the new year, but it's still a ways off yet.

Until next time...

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