Painting Challenge - Space Marines

This post originally appeared on the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge.

Right! For the Armour Theme I knew I wanted to tackle a painting challenge that I'd been putting off for nearly 20 years. I'd always dabbled with Warhammer 40K, but the increasingly grim and humorless turn the game took after Rogue Trader always rubbed me the wrong way. Even in the mid 90's I had an idea to put together a custom chapter to fit in with Games Workshop's Space Wolves and Space Sharks (since renamed to Chapter Charcaradon). A brotherhood of power armored space marines fashioned in the image of the greatest late night talk show host of the mid nineties: Space Ghost.

I'll admit, it's not a great idea. My college roommates and I used to watch Space Ghost religiously, but the show's been off the air for over a decade. And yet, this dumb idea won't leave me alone. Whenever I read a blog post about Oldhammer games, or flip through the latest edition of Warhammer 40K in the game shop, a tiny voice whispers to me, "You should paint some Space Ghosts." Therefore my fellow painters, to exorcise myself of this nagging idea please humor me while I get this out of my system.

I based the paint scheme on the classic Space Ghost uniform, but since I'll likely be putting these on the table against my 8 year old son and he has no idea who or what Space Ghost is, I've tweaked the color scheme a bit closer to something he'll recognizes: Imperial Stormtroopers from Star Wars.

I'm retaining the overall white scheme and black mask/helmet, but only veterans get the red wrist bands. Space Ghost's flashy yellow cape will be reserved for the chapter master himself.

The Space Ghost emblem wasn't really doing it for me as a chapter symbol, so I cooked up one of my own and printed them on decal paper.

I tested the color scheme on three modern figures, but for the most part these are classic Rogue Trader beakie marines I've cobbled together from eBay collections, stripped, repaired and upgraded with current special weapons when they've been missing.

That's a total of 13 space marines for 65 points I believe. And hopefully just under the deadline... the paint is still wet on a few of these!

Oldhammer 40K: "Battle at the Farm" scenario from Rogue Trader

I've been on a nostalgia kick lately, poring over Oldhammer blogs, picking up 20 year old figures from eBay and reacquiring the rulebooks and White Dwarf magazines that were my introduction to the hobby, but have been lost over the last two decades.

I finally got a chance to put some lead on the table and roll some dice and chose to start at the beginning, with the classic "Battle at the Farm" scenario from the original Warhammer 40K: Rogue Trader rule book. Check out our battle down memory lane after the jump.

The Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge: "Oldhammer" Space Orks

This post originally appeared on the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge.

I was all lined up to crank out some medieval foot when I noticed that the first theme for the Painting Challenge was "nostalgia". I'm a late arrival to historical miniatures, and got my start with Rogue Trader era figures from Games Workshop. I picked up a few of the classic 40K figures to replace those I either lost or never acquired 25 years ago, but until now they've been nestled away in storage drawers. These old sculpts flip all of my nostalgia switches, so I broke out the "Snotling Green" paint and painted them up.

I was initially a bit put off by the sculpts. Most of the rank and file are all hunched up, but after getting some color on them I really dug how full of character these guys are.

I loved all of the little packs, bags, ammo and webbing and the retro, 2000A.D. style sci fi armor their sporting (especially those pineapple shoulder pads). I was really happy to finally give these miniatures some love, attention I'm sure they would have lacked had it not been for the "nostalgia" theme of the Painting Challenge.