My Legions of Lies and Fire...

o/

I sold the Alpha Legion. 

Actually that’s not entirely true. I just sold the painted Alpha Legionnaires. 

Well, that’s not true either…

lol, ya gotta love a legion where everything about it is a lie! 

It'll be the simple Green for this one...

Let’s try one more time: I sold the painted Alpha Legionnaires, minus the 30th anniversary marine (which falls into the ‘priceless’ category in my book when you see what it goes for on ebay). I also sold what was left of their FW decal sheet. 

Why you ask? 

Well, funds have been tight a little here of late, and to be honest I was tired of painting that color scheme as it was a bit laborious. No one’s sure where 40k will land currently, so selling one of those armies would be little more than a shot in the dark. Whereas 30k is still going steady and strong.

After a week on ebay, I had a bidder @ $80 who backed out last minute, and a bucket load of ‘watchers’ who didn’t take his place. I relisted but was rather annoyed at the prior last-minute retraction and in a fit of my usual nerd-rage I cancelled the listing shortly thereafter. 2-days following that, I got an unsolicited request (presumably from one of the aforementioned watchers) to relist ‘em as a ‘buy it now’ set at $125, and away they went!

So, where does that leave me with 30k? 

The 'unpainted masses' minus the Cataphractii Termie squad.

Well, Imperialis Auxilia aside, I still have approximately 1200-1300 points of unpainted Marines. Not one to take a breather, I already had another legion in mind: the Salamanders. Among the unpainted masses above I have 2 tactical support squads, one with flamers and the other meltaguns. Add to that both a heavy & combi-flamer in my Cataphractii squad and my pyrotechnical leaning towards the Salamanders ought to be obvious. 

What? You mean you use basic grunts as test models, not termies? Huh...well now there's an idea.

Here is my 1st ‘test model’ who took just as long to paint (if not longer) as the Alphas did on average. Salamanders do like their ‘bling’ and as such the gold did slow things down a bit. Still, I’m happy with the look of it, and whilst I don’t have the FW decals, I have a bucket load of the generic SM decal sheets from which to pull the legion icons from. My Praetor is close to the ‘finished’ state as well, and will be posted up here soon.

*****

My paint recipe for future reference:

Basecoat: Vallejo Heavy Green

Base Drybrush: Glistening Green

Metal Trim: Vallejo Glistening Gold & Gunmetal

Black: GW Chaos Black (duh)

Base: Vallejo Flat Earth

Leather Work: Vallejo red Leather

Wash: Army Painter Strong Tone

Final Drybrush: GW Bleached Bone