Attack of the Beakies!

 Hey everyone, sorry for my intermittent updates-- I've been working on getting my Blood Drinkers army painted (up to around 6k points, woot!) and so have been neglecting my Black Legion project. However, this past weekend I was inspired to sit down and get some things done. As you can tell from the pic, I'm now the proud commander of a horde of lead beakies.

Eat Umbra-pattern bolter!

Why fugly old beakies, you ask? Nostalgia is a big reason. I started 40k with my Dad back in the RT days, and we had the original plastic set of marines, the plastic orks, and all of that. I've wanted to use the old models in a project for a while, but they never really seemed to fit what I was doing. Say what you want about them, but I think some of the old models have a lot of character and dynamism that the new models lack. Take the marine in the lower right corner of the group pic-- he really gives me the impression he's rapid firing around a corner at an oncoming threat, rather than just standing there. From a fluff standpoint I figure there's plenty of justification for there to be MkVI armor in chaos hands. It makes sense that Horus' legion would have been first to receive weapon and armor innovations from the traitor Mechanicum, so the beakies are good to go.

Shoulder pad detail

The second main reason? Armor trim-- I hate it. Painting shoulder pad trim on normal marines drives me up the wall, and chaos bling is the worst. Beakies would get around all that by eliminating it entirely. However, I did want to add chaos flavor in there, so I removed what shoulder pads I could and replaced them with BL shoulder pads. Current chaos backpacks helped round out the look. I also put them on cork bases (the tutorial is here).

Another reason I've hesitated to use beakies up until now is the size variance from the current models. They aren't that much smaller, but I figured I'd run into someone eventually who would try to say I was modeling for advantage. The current backpacks and extra height from the bases makes them stand just a bit taller than the current models, so I figure it will be ok.    

The army won't be all-RT-- these guys will be my basic troopers where the more specialized units will be current models or conversions. However, I think they will add a bit of visual interest to the army and not be something you see every day.

Stay tuned; I'm hoping to have some test models painted toward the end of the week. :)