Badab after Dark: MONTH III

BADAB AFTER DARK

The Badab War fought between 901.M41 and 913.M41, raised questions about the sovereignty of its warriors, its borders and the workings of the Adeptus as a whole. The war was fought in the Badab System, a cluster of star systems in the Segmentum Ultima, between the Loyalist forces of the Imperium of Man and the secessionist Astral Claws Space Marine Chapter. Led by Chapter Master Lufgt Huron, the Astral Claws rebelled against the Imperium, seeking greater autonomy and control over the Badab Sector.

The conflict involved numerous Space Marine chapters, Imperial forces, and even Xenos mercenaries, resulting in a devastating war that left the Badab System in ruins. Ultimately, the Astral Claws were defeated, their Chapter disbanded, and their leaders condemned as heretics. The Badab War stands as a tragic tale of betrayal and the grim darkness of the Warhammer 40,000 universe.

And thus a new challenge is born. WELCOME to the new season of A Tale of Gamers in which our warlords tackle the book that started the entire Heresy – The Badab Wars.

THE CHALLENGE:

YOU, yes you, can participate in this. Simply add #badabafterdark to any social media post that you write and we will find you. We will round up all entrants at the start of each month and comb over the fine hobby produced.

This is an open-ended challenge. Feel free to build and paint however much you like. For our part the challenge will be focussed on producing Kill Teams over 1 year and will culminate in a game held at Adeptcion ’24.

We hope to run games in the UK as well, but that is the acorn of the idea that will one day become the mighty oak.

To summarise:

+ Kill Team forces focussed on the Badab War campaign books. Be they Space Marine, Inquisitorial Agent, Tyrant Legion, or the duplicitous reaver from the Maelstrom, creativity is KING!

+ The event will culminate at Adepticon ’24. Max, Alex and I will gather to fudge our way through a Badab War scenario – but who knows how big it could grow?

+ Use the # #badabafterdark on all social media posts for us to find you. bonus points if you use #taleofgamers as well!

Sign up to our Youtube channel to keep up to date with vlogs, live streams and showcases! 

Month 3, this is actually going really fast for me. This month was a busy month for me at work, but it has given me time to think about this project and what I want to achieve. Now a lot of people are looking at this as an army or a much larger project, for myself this is a much smaller project. I keep thinking about it and I don’t have any real interest anymore in 40k. I love the stories, the lore, in fact the whole universe. But I don’t have any interest in playing 40k. 

So, what the hell am I doing this for. Well, here is my idea and it’s a simple one. I like painting toy soldiers.

I’m looking at not doing an army, I want to create something more different. No set goal, the only thing I’m looking at doing is trying something new and going back to old school and doing this without using an airbrush. 

So, my new plan, I want to paint models that look like the colour plates in the Badab book. And put them on one big display base. Only brush paint and get a feel of the universe in which they are set.

Month 3 is in the bag! Sadly, this has been the most unmotivating month of hobby I can recall in the last decade or so. I finished my second Carcharodon, and that is really the only thing I have painted within the last month. That’s life, though, and I won’t dwell on it.

I present my second painted Carcharodon, Anake. He is a Sternguard Veteran Sergeant rocking a bespoke power sword. As I mentioned last month, you would see a bunch of 3D-printed bits created by Atlan Forge on this particular model. They fit the whole vibe of “Space Sharks,” and I was lucky enough to have my friend, Chris, print a bunch of stuff for me. The bits are amazing but do not fit with the old Mk7 bits I already had on hand. Anake is considerably larger than my first model, but at the moment, I get away with explaining that by saying Anake is a veteran.

I don’t have anything inspirational to say, so I will leave it at that. I have no idea what I will submit for next month, perhaps a Terminator since the Carcharodons have their own special Terminators (Red Brethren). We shall see…

This month has been heavy with other projects and plagued with technical difficulties!

In spite of everything working against me, I did manage to get the base painted up and the base colour sorted on the first Raptor. I absolutely loved painting the venus flytrap the most (for some reason, who could say?) 

  But in spite of nailing a nice recipe on the Raptor, as I continue to read through the Badab chapters for our Articles of Secession podcast on the Crescent Edge Creative YouTube channel, I find myself more and more sympathetic to the Secessionist cause…

The painting has begun!

I decided to focus on the yellow portion of the armour first as traditionally this the more difficult colour to paint, plus I kept hearing about how good the new ‘Imperial Fist’ yellow contrast paint from GW was and I wanted to try it.

To begin with, I primed the models with vallejo black surface primer and then gave a zenithal pre-shade with vallejo model colour white (leaving the underside and recesses dark), all through the airbrush. Finally, I thinned down Imperial Fist and applied it as a thin glaze over the pre-shade.

Wow. The stories were true! I had my issues with contrast paints initially, but they make perfect glazes when used through an airbrush, in particular the newer generation- i’ve also had great success with Baal Red. Great coverage and vivid colour over the white areas.

I wasn’t too happy with the darker areas however, the yellow glaze over the predominantly black areas appeared green and dull. So after a brief team huddle in our discord server, I followed the advice of Myles and Keith- a two colour pre-shade.

I re-primed the models with black and then this time applied a dark magenta (Vallejo Dark Red) layer before adding the zenithal white on top, followed by the Imperial Fist glaze. The result was much better! The vivid yellow on the highlights was matched with warmer tones in the shadows rather than the dull green I had initially.

I’m really happy with the results and can’t wait to get onto the next stage – wait, quartered red… oh no.

Wish me luck!

I really should organise my time better, pesky work getting in the way of hobby. Any bored philanthropist millionaires out there who wanna spread the love a bit so a bald old ginger guy doesn’t have to go to work then hit me up.

I *have* managed to get my paws on some terminators from the Leviathan box, they’re arriving this evening courtesy of Uncle Matt. I’m looking forward to them, like… REALLY looking forward to them. Just look at that colour scheme… They’re going to look immense.

So, Fire Hawks… yeah… love me some fire hawks, If I ever went back to Main 40k I recon that’s where I’d go, they’re one of the oldest chapters in the lore yet have never been in the big leagues so haven’t become parodies of themselves unlike most of the others… (I’m looking at you Santa Grimnar… get in the bin)

Interestingly they were originally the source of ‘The Legion of the Damned’ according to some very old Rogue Trader era lore after a Fire Hawks cruiser was lost in the warp, no trace of the ship was ever found but wherever the mysterious & silent Legion of the Damned appeared, so would a ship whose signature matched that of the Fire Hawks cruiser lost millennia ago.

So, why Fire Hawks? 

My Science teacher, Mr. Paul Arnold. A truly inspirational man with his copies of Realm of Chaos, Warhammer fantasy role-play & the like on the Science lab shelves mingled in with the Attenboroughs and the Carl Sagans. But before I’d really paid much attention to this, I saw him painting a Marine, an original RTB01 Rogue trader plastic Mk6 Beakie, in the original Fire Hawk livery of Yellow with red flames….a literal mind blowing moment for me.

Years later when I was working for GW he used to come into the store I “worked” in and I’d never let him pay full price because he had such a formative effect on me as a teacher. Great man.

So yeah, I’m taking delivery of the Leviathan terminators tonight so they’re going to get the treatment you can see below.

************************

Successionist

Life has given me a right kicking this month (thus the tardiness of the article). Joker for me.

Brace yourself: I like many out there have this last month bought a set of the leviathan terminators and modified them! Shocking right! 

To get the mantis feel I added the different thigh plates and some groin-cloths all the mantis warriors seem to wear in the badab index section! And to be honest other than a banner and big samurai sword (incoming) they were done. I want to go for a 3rd Ed reminiscent feel so fists and a powersword was perfect really.

I also had a colour test of a bunch of greens and yellows (and some tiger stripe-burnt orange) to start spray-a-thon summer 2023 and tbh I really like the games workshop mantis warriors contrast for the base and bad moon yellow for the yellow (top row)

So, this came together with my group saying they wanted to do badab and well I better commit to make them have something to aim for! 

So, with these terminators I’m going to be doing a 1500pts approx badab force and with that I’m going to work on getting the main force assembled for next month so I can blast them all at the same time to get a nice consistent base colour.

Max

took Jokers this round, but we expect them back next month!

Sign up to our Youtube channel to keep up to date with vlogs, live streams and showcases! 

Month two was always going to be a month of taking stock and planning for me. A little more fluff reading and watching has cemented what my army will look like and a couple of elements that I want to include. After looking through the new siege of Cthonia book and some soul searching I’ve decided to stick with my plan of a 1500 point zone mortalis army. The units I wanted to include (from my rough grasp of the lore) were a sternguard style veteran squad and a chaplain to act as a Death Speaker. The army roughly looks like this …

 VII: Imperial Fists

Allegiance: Traitor

+ Rite of War: +

Rite of War: The Stone Gauntlet (IF)

+ HQ: +

Praetor, Cataphractii [435Pts]: Warden of Inwit, Warlord

Legion Cataphractii Praetor: Cataphractii Terminator Armour, Paragon Blade, Vigil Storm Shield

Huscarl Squad

Centurion [95Pts]: Chaplain

+ Elites: +

Contemptor Dreadnought Talon [205Pts]

Veteran Squad [185Pts]

+ Troops: +

Phalanx Warder Squad [265Pts] x 2 

++ Total: [1,450Pts] ++

I’m basing my list around the 30k Imperial Fists because as they’re the Executioners parent legion it just fits. I picked traitor as I didn’t plan on using any special characters and it felt right for the role they played in Badab. I wanted the army to feel brutal but not chaotic or traitorous. It might be outmanoeuvred but it won’t be out fought. The amount of power axes might be a little ‘on the nose’ for the Executioners at 26 but I’m hoping it gives a barbaric feel to the army. A force used to storm enemy ships and beat resistance into submission. I’m undecided on which model to base my Praetor on now (that’s a problem for next month) but I’ve ordered both Fafnir Rann and Evander Garrius to play about with and see which one is more to my liking. Over the next month, I plan to do some 3D printing and kit bashing as well and decide on what my basing might look like. 

******************

So last month was a bit of a bust for me. Two weeks of vacation ate into my hobby time, but I finally managed to get my hands on a set of the new terminators and set about making a test model.

With the Carcharodons, I wanted to create a squad that looked like it had been operating on the fringes of imperial space, far from easy resupply and having to rely on ancient suits of armour and makeshift repairs. The 40k aesthetic is particularly thick in skulls, aquilas, crux terminatus and fluttering parchments, and I set out to reduce it down to a clean, functional aesthetic with some of the hallmarks of an ‘earlier time’ when they were first cast out into the void.

Taking a nod from the Tyberos model, I carefully removed all the symbolism from the model and used some tiny resin rivets (Zinge Industries ‘Rivet Forest’ to craft some bonding studs onto some armour plates. I didn’t want it to be overkill as I’d like to use different arrangements on each model.

I’m also planning on using some green stuff to sculpt thicker individual plates.

Wanting to mix up the armaments on the kill team, I’ve also procured some lightning claws to mix into the squad, and was pleased to see that the weapons from the older kits are still scaled appropriately to be able to attach from the elbow down.

The next step for me is to finish the squad conversions and start getting paint on them. 

Hopefully, I’ll be able to preview a full squad in next months article.

If you would like to join the journey please write an introduction to your project and post it on your social media with #badabafterdark. Every month keep apace with the warlords in creating your own collection.

For the Maelstrom!

For the Imperium!