The Valhallan 8th Ice Warriors

Welcome to my Warhammer 40k blog. This is my first blog, so I hope I will keep it up to date with all my latest goings on!

About six months ago I visited my local Games Workshop hobby centre (Manchester Arndale) and the lovely guys in there got me back into 40k after a 10 year stint. I decided to pick an army that had just come out when I was collecting almost a decade ago: Black Templars (yep, that puts it into perspective how long ago it was). So over the summer I made, converted and painted up a decent 3000pt army of CCW Initiates, Neophytes, Sword Brethren and LR Crusaders. I still have more to do, including some Assault Termies with Forgeworld stormsheilds and a currently untouched Chaplain Grimaldus; but there's just so many marines you can paint before you get bored. So a couple of weeks ago I decided to start a new army. I wanted to go back to my first and one of my all time favourite armies: Imperial Guard Valhallan Ice Warriors!

I dug around at home to see if I could find any of my old miniatures. However, time had played its toll. I could only find about 15 figures, an autocannon without a gunner and a very dusty leman russ. At least it was a start. I set about stripping them down of my poor adolescent paint job. Whilst my figures sat in a pot of nail polish remover (kindly donated to the cause by my girlfriend), I started researching the Valhallans.

First of all I got my hands on the 3rd, 3.5th and the new 5th edition of the Imperial Guard Codex. Reading all the background in there I began to get a good understanding of how a fluffy Valhallan army might be made up: Loads of expendable men (especially conscripts) and a huge amount of firepower in the form of artillery. Now I had a rough idea of where I was headed with my army I could get about buying the essentials: HQ and two troop units.

Fortunately for me GW had not decided to revamp these, so my old 1994 models wouldn't look outdated, but most of the original models were still available through the collectors part of the GW website. Metal models are expensive so I also hit up eBay to see if I could snag me any bargains. Nothing fantastic as of yet!

Because of the lack of variance in the Valhallan models, I decided to convert one of the Cadian Command Squads for my HQ choice. I decided to use the Cadian bodies with Pig Iron Kolony Winter Heads. I thought I could also use these heads for veterans, and for a bit of variance I thought I could get hold of some of the West Wind Secrets of the Third Reich head packs. Pictures to come when and as I finish!

I also had to decide a paint scheme. I has originally painted my Valhallans like the Soviet Unions Red Army; brown and tan greatcoats with olive drab uniforms. Since I wanted a fluffy army this time round I could think of no better camouflage for an ice world than all white. I will have to experiment a bit to get a good contrast in the miniatures with all white uniforms. I'll show my attempts shortly.

This is my project for the next six months or so. Hopefully in the next post I will have something to show you!