Good evening one and all, and welcome to my new Chaos plog!
I've been playing Chaos Marines for over 20 years now, and always harboured a desire to have a fully playable army for each Legion. Over the last few years life has aligned such that I could actually do that, so I started in on it... somewhere during 6th ed I think. I got a list I was happy with done for Alpha Legion, World Eaters, Iron Warriors and Black Legion, and got the first three of those mostly painted up.
Then Chapter Approved started happening, and points got changed. Now the way I was treating these armies was very much like a Magic deck: work out the list to 2000 points, build it paint it, put it in a case. I'm often the guy going elsewhere to play, and for a long time I frankly didn't have the energy to work out new lists each game and work out how to transport stuff etc etc. However, having to accommodate yearly points changes simply doesn't work on this system, and I was becoming less and less enthused by the whole thing with no idea what to do next with my four Chaos armies.
Then it hit me. The 9 Legions project was my equivalent of "I'm gonna collect a whole Chapter!" and every single person I know that's said that in real life was using it as a way to deal with mental health issues and frankly, I was doing the same. Thing is, I'm way way better now than I was a few years ago and don't need to obsessively collect as a coping mechanism. I also don't subscribe to the 'colour scheme=rules' logic and neither do the people I play with, so clearly the way to square the circle was homebrew a colour scheme and kinda start again from scratch.
Newly energised by knocking the cruft out of my thinking, I spent several hours transcribing all my lists to a spreadsheet then collapsing them down so I didn't have duplicate models. For example, my Alpha Legion has sixty-odd Cultists, so any other Cultist squad got removed, as any more than sixty would be superfluous. I also don't need to start totally from scratch model-wise, as what was originally destined to be my Black Legion was all undercoated and all the new range, with only five models having been painted in black and gold in my failed run at last years ETL.
"Where's the pictures? We didn't come here for words!" I hear you cry. Here's the first WIP of the new army, currently named the Stygian Lords and lacking an identifying symbol. They're purple and orange because I like the colours and I'm using Warpstone Glow on my Titanicus stuff, Warpstone Glow being possibly my favourite GW colour ever.
This guy needs a second coat minimum on the trim. I also don't know what colour to do the bolter casing yet.
I'm really hyped for this army. I'm looking forward to seeing where it takes me, especially since I'm gonna be able to do things like branch out into the odd squad of Cult troops, or grab a one-off Forge World model without wondering where I'll use it.
Oh, and if you followed the 9 Legions plog and are wondering what's happening to the already painted stuff, it's gonna live in a display cabinet, with the exception of the Fire Raptors. They're being moved to the new scheme, if I have to build one more of those things I'll stab someone with it.
Dragonlover