It’s been quite a few years since I did any of these, and in that time GW have changed their washes… so I’m not sure if the roughness of these is down to my rusty technique or the different formula of the red wash. Still, they’re passable. On to finishing off their Chapter Badges, and adding in Squad markings.

Also started work on a Gnoblar that I picked up a while back, intending to use him as a stand-in Squig Hound in a Grot mob for my Ork Horde, Waaagh! Biglug.

For those wondering what this ‘Great Army Update’ is, here’s the original post from the (now closed) UTC forums:
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Back in (I think) 2002, I ran an ‘Army a Week’ challenge for myself on DakkaDakka, to take all of the various Warhammer 40K armies that I had started over the years and never got finished (about 9 in all) and turn them all, 1 each week, into at least a bare minimum game-legal army.

Unfortunately, as my painting time has been rather limited in the years since then, most of those armies have sat there without being updated ever since. Codexes have changed, and 2 new rulebooks have since been released, and so some of them are starting to look a little dated. And some are just waiting for the chance to grow beyond 400-500 point games.

So, starting now (and running for as long as it takes…) I’ll be working through the armies one at a time with the intent of updating them all to fit their current codexes, and bring them all up to a minimum of 1500 points.

To kick things off: The Imperial Dragons Space Marines.

The Imperial Dragons were my first 40K army, started back in 1994. They were built predominantly using minis from the 2nd edition starter set and the Space Crusade board game, with scratch-built cardboard vehicles, and were painted in GW’s metallic green (pics here).

When GW discontinued their coloured metallics, I changed over to Dark Angels green, but never really got much done in the new colour scheme. With the ‘Army a Week’ challenge, I splintered off the original metallic guys as a ‘Lost Company’ and an army of their own, and built a bare bones new army out of what I had sitting around. Looks rather a lot like this:

You can find individual unit pics here.

This army got tweaked a little when 4th ed was released… for a while including units drawn from the Lost Coy, with everyone in Drop Pods (never finished, made from Pringles cans) and an Apothecary in each Tactical squad.

I’m stripping out the excess for the moment, and concentrating on the first 1000 points… which starts out looking like this:

To do:
– Add 5 more Marines to the Tactical squad.
– Repaint the Tac Squad sergeant green (He’s taken from the Librarian’s Command Squad, which no longer exists. My Vets were all painted black)
– Replace the scout squad’s bolters with bolt pistols (can’t have bolters and combat blades any more…)
– Fix the Vindicator’s Storm Bolter and missing aerial
– Add a searchlight and autolaunchers to the Dreadnought
– Add a Drop Pod for the Dreadnought
– Replace the Techmarine’s powerfist with an axe.

First up: The Tactical Squad
5 extra Marines, basecoated and ready for trim.

More (hopefully) soon.