Getting Organized

Warhammer 40K – Following through with one of my resolutions, I've begun organizing my space marine army. I've found that when dealing with a large number of models like this it's best to organize what you have to develop a plan of action. I've assembled, primed and base coated most of my models. When working with GW stuff I tend to put a quick base coat on every model after they've been assembled. It's a habit I developed from playing in 40K events years ago. The old (maybe still in effect?) rule was a model had to have at least 3 colors on it to participate in an event. While this works fine to avoid having grey or black models on the tabletop it slows the process for finishing models. From a distance base coated models look ok and it's easy to slack off and never finish them (hence this huge cabinet of half finished models).

After sorting through the models I have built and re-reading numerous source books I'm only one squad of tactical marines short of having a full company. Of course in addition to the standard company I have numerous squads that would be part of other companies or support units. Rather than attempt to build an entire chapter I think I'm going to flesh out the captains of each company and reuse the basic components when I want. To keep this flexibility I'm not using the codex company color identifiers, this keeps this fluid and will also allow me to use multiple codexes depending on what I feel like fielding.

Reading through the Blood Angel codex I think this will be the basis for at least one of my companies. Using that book gives you numerous possibilities for varying your force and shoehorning in some of the traits that were left out of the current marine codex.