Krieg, Guard & Orks! Armageddon Mega Project

These took way longer than I expected even doing full days of painting as I am currently on leave. I have pieced together these minis from the Death Korps of Krieg bodies, Palanite Subjugator left arms, right arms and shields, and the guns from the Palanite Enforcers which I needed to trim down removing the second hand on the foregrip and making them one-handed due to them carrying shields.

I am happy with the paint job and pretty happy with the posing, for the most part. I hope to improve on the posing when I get to adding the second squad in the 2000 point force in the future.

The next unit to get me closer to having 500 points to play with is one I have been fearful of doing for quite a long time and that’s 5 x Deathriders. They are great minis with tonnes of detail and I hope to do them justice, not sure how long they will take me due to the amount of detail but fingers crossed they appear here in the next couple of weeks or so.

Keep hobbying out there guys.

Managed to get the second squad finished today with pretty much the same process as the first squad. Some small differences like the knee pad colour and the grenades on the back so each squad be identified from the front and back when playing.

That’s the last of the troops for my first 500 points. Next on the table is a 10 man Engineer Squad, which should be interesting.

So been back and forth doing various little projects but I am now pretty focused on getting my 40k force to 500 points and start playing and learning the rules. 1st Squad is done pictured below and 2nd Squad should be joining them soon.

It took me an age to settle on a style for the bases but ended up using filler on them to give them texture, cork for the small walls and ballast for the rubble/stones. Went with Flesh Tearer Red Contrast on the filler which worked a treat. I painted the wall and the rocks Grey Seer then Basilicanum Grey (I did paint the cork and the rocks with thinned PVA first to seal them and help their bonding). To finish I went with some Gamers Grass 2mm tufts. For the bases and the models, I have used Vallejo Mecha Matt Varnish which was kindly advised by the lovely Gerry.

Super pleased with how they have turned out which I have found is really motivating to get the next squad done. Being Guardsman they will last all of 5 seconds on the board which kinda makes the painting time put into them seem silly but I am really happy with how they look which has been a long-drawn-out process of trial and error. Moving forward with colours set I hope to pick up the pace a little on the infantry. Got two more squads in the 500 points list and then it’s some cavalry…….and a tank!

Yesterday I managed to finish cleaning up 1st Squad for my 500 points. The mould lines vary between different sculpts and even different years of production it seems. Overall they are not too bad the only place that is difficult to clean up is bandage-like gaiters. Smoothing out this area and cutting back in the gaps between the wraps is a real time sink.

After that, I have done a base layer of Grey Seer primer, followed by a Wraithbone zenithal.

The minis themselves as I mentioned in my previous post are the Engineer ones. They have some lovely backpacks with plenty of details. I have saved the demolition ones for use on my Engineers Units but have kept a single demo pairing for each Squad. I also wanted to have the Squad Sgt to be easily identified and so have used one of the miniatures from the Command Squad as my Sergeant which has a lovely breastplate instead of the overlapping plate armour.

Next, I guess it’s time to get some paint on these guys.

Choosing which unit to do first ended up being quite easy for me, it had to be a unit of Guardsman. I have to admit to still referring to this army as Imperial Guard rather than Astra Militarum mainly because that’s what they were called when I started collecting them and I prefer it.

I do like all of the DKoK range but I especially like the armour plating on the Engineer miniatures. The standard Guardsman has a great look but I do wish they had some sort of body armour. With this in mind, I have chosen to use the Engineer minis as my Guardsman and the Guardsman minis for crews and teams that support rather than front line infantry.

So time to build, clean and prime my first 10 x Guardsman.

With the DKoK likely to be more of a theme rather than a unit limiting force in the upcoming update, I am looking to do a combined arms force.

500 points get you quite a few minis and likely more than some specialised armies have in their 2000 point force.

500 Points DKoK List

HQ

Death Korps Marshal

Troops

10 x Infantry Squad

10 x Infantry Squad

Elite

8 x Engineers

Fast Attack

5 x Death Rider Squadron

Heavy Support

3 x Mortar Heavy Weapon Squad

Leman Russ Battle Tank

38 miniatures, wow this is going to be a challenging project!

So doing an Imperial Guard (Astra Militarum) force unless you take a heap load of armour will find you with quite a number of miniatures to paint, after all the basic Guardsman is 5 points. I am currently having to make some assumptions to aim off for the release of the next Guard codex as we are seeing large changes and a big one for DKoK as they are supposedly having their core elements and options folded into the main codex with the specials still in the FW Compendium.

Building that many miniatures is really off-putting so to start with I am just aiming for a 500 point force, which is something I can get started playing with and incrementally expand on to larger points values. By choosing to start with a smaller force helps with my learning curve and in the amount of time it will take me to get each increment of models done, I am hoping to have had some games and got a feel for the force as it increases.

So this weekend I will decide what will be my first 500 points, post the list and which unit I will be building and painting first.

I fell in love with the Krieg miniatures a long time ago and started collecting the miniatures maybe three and a half years ago. As many know they are a little pricey so putting aside funds and waiting for stuff to come back into stock meant it took years to finally get everything together. Like many in the OTT community, I wanted to give my force some personalisation and I have done this through other models in the range and by focussing on specific aesthetics that I wanted.

With such a long time collecting and the cost involved I wanted to be 100% on every aspect before I threw myself into the project and so started with just a Kill Team and used them to test out colour combos and weapon options. Having settled on these things I am now able to turn to my first 40k army in probably 18 plus years and begin the journey with a couple of my friends. Warren and Lloyd. As Warren may or may not have mentioned this will be a long term project likely going into 2022 as we all want to use what time we have to create armies that we can be proud of and to be honest I am also thinking of taking this project beyond the army and to push myself to enter it in Armies on Parade 2022 with a themed board.

It would be great to see other groups begin to form and maybe join us on the same journey, so if you and some friends or a gaming group want to band together in a project this is the perfect place for you to post your progress and keep each other motivated..

So I have drawn Orks in this project, which should be cool as its been a long time since I have done anything Ork related (The Ork Submarine being the last project I undertook many years ago now)

But I have a problem with Orks – the comedy factor. For this project I don’t want Orks to be funny, I’m a bit tired of the cockney hooligan depiction of Orks, so I’m on a hunt to see if I can find sources and stories where Orks are presented as a truly terrifying force to be reckoned with.

If you have suggestions please let me know, but to begin with, I’m going to give ‘The Beast Arises’ Series a go and see if the depiction of Orks in it is closer to what I want.

How do you feel about the ‘comedic portrayal of Orks?