Well, one of them anyway. After last week's bare plastic I wanted to get some painted stuff out there too. Call it a year-end retrospective type post.
A recent acquisition (earlier this year) the Custodes force is one I am happy with for now - plenty of the main infantry types, a bike squad, a couple of tanks, and one of each dreadnought type. It covers all of the bases and I have a couple more units on the bench to add some additional options like the bolter guys and to ensure each squad has a vexillum if they need it.
The Howling Griffons are my oldest army. I painted them in the late 80's and into the 90's and I don't really plan to add much to them. I do have some additional units on a shelf for them (scouts, more old metal terminators, some bikes) but there's not much urgency to get those done. These are mostly RT & 2nd Edition models and are still on the original 25mm bases but I get them out for at least one game each edition with people who are not nitpicky about such things so I can say I've played them every edition so far. Some day I may decide I have too much time on my hands and do a modern force in these colors but it will not be anytime soon for as much as I love this scheme it is a royal pain to do and get right. That said I love it - it was the most distinctive one on that double-page display in White Dwarf and then the Compendium and it also makes me think of comic-book Iron Man so it was an easy choice back then - if not an easy pile of work.
The Crimson Fists were effectively the successors to the Griffons above when I got tired of spending ridiculous amounts of time painting those colors. It is a dramatically simpler scheme to paint and from day one I loved the cover of the Rogue Trader book - even before I knew what it was about - so they were an easy choice They were initially put together during 3rd edition and I have added to them in every edition since - I still am! There may be as many or more units in the workshop designated for this army as are shown here so it's not slowing down. Various units have been altered or even phased out as editions have come and gone but I don't care - those units are still part of the army. Those shelves have everything from beakie marines and RT Predators and Rhino's to Aggressors and Redemptor dreadnoughts so it covers most of my history with the game and it will keep going as long as I do.
They Grey Knights became a thing for me in 8th edition as I had liked the models for a while and decided to go with a zero-backlog approach of buying painted models. This is fairly easy as this army tends to be painted in a fairly consistent scheme. Of course touch-ups and base-unification eventually led to filling in some raw units and ... I have a backlog. I do have enough to play a fully painted army, no worries there, but there are still some units on the to-be-finished list ... possibly a few on the to-be-started list as well. Ah well. I haven't played them in 10th yet but I'm looking forward to it.
This picture is just the Blood Angel vehicles that are finished - the infantry and dreadnoughts are in a different case. I started putting together an army in 5th but didn't play them until 6th and I think my oldest batrep type post here was for 7th. I liked this army from early on and once I made the decisions to start picking up units I was a convert and it has never stopped. Much of the army was bought already painted (Blood Angels are usually well done and like the GK's are pretty consistent in style) but some of it is my work and much of the newer stuff is mine. I have developed a pretty significant backlog here as well as "acquisitions" exceeded "painting" by quite a bit for a few years. Now my focus when I work on them is on finishing some Primaris units to add a few more modern options. This is another army where I add new units every edition and will likely continue to do so for the long haul. It's a nice alternative to my standard C-Fists but it's still "marines" so I don't have to re-learn what every unit does if I decide to switch to them for a while.
The Imperial Knights are another recent acquisition. They were only added to 40K as an army in 6th edition and at first I thought it was a terrible choice but I've come around in the years since - mostly because they look incredible on the table - so I bought a few in 8th but didn't get serious about making them an army until earlier this year. Despite owning some unbuilt knights I figured the quickest way to get them on the table (and to avoid upping the backlog) I started hunting for painted knights and started picking those up over a few months. This was all big knights I made a deliberate choice here as while most armies are painted to look like an organized unit I wanted my knights to be a sort of "freeblade crusade" with every knight in a different color scheme to show a bunch of individual knights gathering together to fight some great threat. Given this I needed to get the big guys first as I want the small ones to represent their squires and have each one painted to match one of the larger knights. I have the smaller ones but now I need to paint them up to match - I'm sure that won't take any time at all.
Anyway there's a bit of retrospection and thinking out loud here in December. More to come.
