2nd Edition Army Challenge Round 3: Legion of the Damned Commander TO-DONE!!!

 

Hi folks,

The 2nd Edition Army challenge has gone live for another round. Over the next 6 months I will be painting the Legion of the Damned Army of my dreams. If you have been following the blog for a while, you will know that my very first army was Legion of the Damned, back before they had the White Dwarf Codex. Back in those days you could only take a Tactical Squad of them, so I had to extrapolate how much the other units would cost and what their stats would look like. After a while, my gaming mates complained that the army was too cheesy, so I repainted them as 100% Codex legal Dark Angels. A little while after that the LotD Codex was released and it was pretty much exactly how I used to run them (though Terminators were conspicuously missing from the list...).

Having repainted the Dark Angels over the last two challenges, I felt it was time to revisit Legion of the Damned. With only a couple of 2nd Ed. figures to fill out the list, I hit ebay pretty hard for a couple of weeks to get everything that I needed. some of the models were once in a lifetime level purchases (looking at you Centurius and NIB metal Landspeeder!). Others were a lot cheaper to source. If you are interested in seeing my challenge list and intro, check out the blog post at Dr The Viking's Cowabunga blog. 

My first 200 point "slice" was a Legion of the Damned Commander, which I converted to carry a thunder hammer. The Codex says I must take one of these and the model used is an old Chaplain, so converting the Crozius Arcanum was always going to be the challenge. A thunder hammer or power axe are the obvious choice, as it only requires changing the weapons head. 

I chose a dedicated LotD bolter for the right hand to keep an open pose; I really wanted people to see the detail I had spent hours painting. Originally I had planned a Brother-Captain Tycho style combi-melta, but it would have covered up the combat blade and leg. The paint scheme is pretty standard for a 2nd Ed. LotD figure, though I will drop the hint that I painted all of the flames Corax White before painting over with yellow and orange, to make the flames brighter. The fireball on the right shoulder pad was inspired by the mana symbol for mountains in Magic the Gathering!

The backpack covers some of the careful flame-work I did on the left shoulder pad, but that could not be helped. You can still see it from the right angles, which will have to be enough.

 

The finish is not quite as crisp as my Dark Angels, but I am enjoying the free-hand work. It feels more like artistic expression, than the safe "colour-by-numbers" schemes I have used previously. Over the next 5 months I will have an awful lot of free-hand to do; let's see if I am still this enthusiastic in June 2022.

See you across the table,

Marc