Epic Proportions WIP

Salamanders Slither Forth

If they could muster an entire veteran company, my Salamanders must be a pre-Istvaan V army...

As May marches on, I'm making some progress in my goal to paint/restore somewhere between 500-1000 points each month as part of the Epic Proportions challenge.  I'm going for the low hanging fruit this month and restoring the first GW army of any kind that I ever owned and played games with.  Additionally this story will explain why I have a green space marine army that's not the first legion.

My first exposure to the 40K universe was when I started picking up White Dwarf issues in 8th grade way back in 1990.  However for the first year I was interested in the hobby, it was a solo adventure.  Coming from a small rural town in Pennsylvania I didn't know any one who was even familiar with Games Workshop or Warhammer.   While I had gotten Rogue Trader, RTB01, and other box sets for Christmas that year, other than trying to convince my younger brother to play an overly complicated game that neither one of us could totally understand, my experiences with actual gameplay were only in issues of WD or my imagination.  All that changed one fateful day in 9th grade Geometry class...

One of the many measures of my hobby butterfly nature, I'm relatively sure I applied these basecoats sometime in 1992 but never got any farther than that in the intervening 28 years...

While bored in the early weeks of Geometry class, I was drawing Khorne symbols and eight pointed stars on my book cover.  A guy who sat next to me that I didn't know leaned over and told me he preferred Tzeentch.  Joined quickly in our mutual love of Games Workshop and their products, that friendship became my entry point in the world of gaming with friends.  While I had only a few scattered issues of White Dwarf, my new friend had a subscription and every issue back to 100 and he would bring one or two to school every week so I could borrow them.  I loved to absorb all the minute details and awesome battle reports of those issues that are now considered classics.  It was like mainlining all the available lore for the WH40K universe at the time and caught me up on the gap on how the universe had progressed since the publication of Rogue Trader.

Now in those days my friend had a large WFB army and a wide variety of classic RT models.  2nd edition Space Marine came out in the fall of 1991, and he either got it for Christmas or he bought a copy in the spring.  I traded him a bunch of epic Eldar I had bought years before I even knew what the game was for the marines that came in the 2nd edition box set.  The FLGS where we bought our GW stuff was starting an Epic Space Marine league for the summer and we both joined the league.  However the assortment of Rhinos, Land Raiders and marines who came in the box were not quite enough for me to field a 1500 point army, and certainly not the right balance of elements to field a competitive force. 

As you can see in the first photo, originally there were yellow squares on all the Rhinos of the company in the same pattern.  I added red squares that will alternate in different positions as well as numbers on the doors to distinguish the separate detachment's Rhinos while keeping the spirit of the original paint work

Fortunately my friend knew a local gamer in our area who was a couple of years older than we were and a prolific player and painter.  This gamer had some painted epic Salamanders that were up for sale and I was fortunate enough to get there first and start the foundation of my Epic force with some nicely painted marines and a few vehicle units to give me some variety .  I bought a Veteran Company, a Chaplain Special Character, an Assault Detachment, a Vindicator squadron, and a Whirlwind battery.  The icing on the cake was that there was also a spare Titan that was completed that was thrown in for a few extra dollars.  I wish I could remember how much I paid but I know the amount of money I would have had access to at that time would not be very much.  It can't have been more than $25 - $30, but of course that was 1992 dollars so I think adjusted for inflation that would be at least $75 currently.  I only played a few games in the store league, but I played countless games of Epic on the floor of my friend's basement and in the room of the one other kid in our high school who played GW games.

The painter of my core Salamanders went on to some hobby related greatness later in the 90’s.  Their work was featured in White Dwarf three times and they won best painted army at US Grand Tournaments more than once when those events were still run by Games Workshop.  The small space marine army I bought was painted years before these accolades and certainly were not painted to an award winning level, but they far outstripped my painting abilities at the time.  The veteran company, chaplain stand, and assault detachment were especially nice, being painted, shaded, and highlighted which was pretty rare in our local gaming scene in 1993.  For the sake of nostalgia and my appreciation of owning a small piece of GW painting greatness connected history, I'm going to leave the units mostly as originally painted with a few changes I will detail below.

I used the Ultramarine Iron Halo badge to denote these Rhinos are Veteran Company Transports.

At the time GW was releasing all sorts of new specialized troops and new vehicles for epic and things were pretty fluid in the game at the time as to how certain units were represented on the board.   The veteran company was built as 18 stands of four tactical marines with the model for space marine captain in the center of each stand.  From what I can see online, stands with that composition are now used more commonly to represent command stands for units but I'm going to stick with this company the way they were built because I also have a detachment of six stands I built this way for the Ultramarines army so I'll have the necessary internal consistency.  I am reflocking the bases because 30 year old flock degenerates to dust, and adding some transfers and freehand paint to the rhinos to distinguish the detachments with in the company.

Also on the list are banners for each detachment.  There is already a banner for the company commander which you can see in the first picture above.  Nowadays it looks pretty primitive but in 1993 it was great detail work for a freehand banner so I'm repairing it and keeping it on the unit as a tribute to the work of  the original painter.  While looking at a Salamanders entry in the Space Marine codex for banner inspiration, I discovered that the first company of the Salamanders has black shoulders pads on their right shoulder so in a fit of insanity I've decided to paint 95 shoulder pads black.  I don't think I can work out a .5 mm size freehand dragon symbol to fit on the shoulder pad but who knows what craziness may grab me at the painting table.

Due to accidentally selecting the wrong size flock while refreshing this detachment these marines look like they are slogging through a Catachan level jungle...

Thanks for coming along on another long digression about Oldhammer times past and I will update soon with pictures of the completed company.