The State of my 30k: Emperor's Children

lol, I guess this is slightly off topic for the first of my 'State of my 40k' series.

Current Disposition:

My apologies for the crummy photos.

Yes folks, I actually painted a pair of Space Marines this week! It is the first time in months in which marines of any sort have landed in my painting lineup! Sadly (as you can see) I don't have the FW recon marines, but lowly scouts…albeit with minor conversions done to them. Recon Marines are fully fledged marines and not in-fact 'lowly scouts' however they can switch to 'scout armor' which reduces their save to a 4+ in exchange for outflank.

The Night Lords Vigilator I had intended to pair with this unit originally is going to go into the Simple Green for a repaint (again!?!). Not sure what I'll do with him to be honest though. An infiltrating, Warlord with a 4+/5++ sounds great on paper, but a few test games with him resulted in all but giving my opponent the Warlord VP! Hell, the fucker never lived beyond turn 2! So needless to say, I intend to have someone else serve as my Warlord. I also wanted a more 'generic' army than the Night Lords list (true, that's optional, but the only Legion to wear the Aquila was the EC, not the NL. If anything my force may end up being a mix of beleaguered loyalists rather than just the Emperor's Children.

Ya see, unlike the usual 'pretty boy' appearance of the Emperor's Children, mine are (as is so typical of me) dirty and grimy with battle-damaged armor. These guys are loyalist (and thus short-lived) survivors of the Istvaan III betrayal. Forewarned of the impending virus bombing by Captain Saul Tarvitz, this squad took shelter in an abandoned drop pod after resealing the hatches. Luckily the pod was undamaged (ensuring a proper hermetic seal) as the Life Eater virus would have otherwise resulted in 100% casualties for the squad. Following that, they weathered the subsequent firestorm in the pod as well. Such an inferno was more or less 'just another day' in the life of a drop pod, and so was a safe place to continue to hold tight. Suffering psychologically from the outrage of betrayal, these marines fought to the last against their former brethren…and they certainly look the part!

In addition to this squad, I have an unpainted/assembled Techmarine with conversion-beamer, and his retinue of servo-automata (servitors with bolters and chainswords), and my old 1st. generation Predator, the aforementioned Vigilator and…well, that's it.

Future Recruitment:

God I wish! Currently even the Chinese knock-offs are financially out of my reach. Though going that route, It looks like about $130 would bring my force up to about 1K in points. For the time being, I'll have to content myself with painting what models I have. Of course given that I only ever manage to paint 3-4 models for any one project at a given time (at most), that ought to keep me content for quite awhile. If someone wants to play 30k, then I can (hopefully) borrow from Bob if needs be, as he has a sizable Emperor's Children force (or at least he does compared to me).

The Ebay Threat:

Zilch. If anything, ebay will be my answer to someday financing more 30k Emperor's Children, rather than finding themselves on it!