Warhammer 40,000 – Imperial Fists Call to Arms Pt 3
I meant to post this two weeks ago, but I got caught up. Never the less, it is time to give you an update, as I have been busy behind the scenes. We left of in part 2 of the Call to Arms with setting the tone and giving you context on the scope and that this project will depict a Space Marine force of the Imperial Fists' 3rd company. I did a quick check if I had everything that I needed to move on and for stock taking, I still wanted to clean some parts to inspect them closer, so I setup another jar for paint stripping.
These were mostly some bits and pieces, weapon options and spares for Terminator and Assault Squads. Not necessarily part of the core army project. But now everything - with the exception of some vehicle parts - is stripped.
Among the "strippers" was this goofy mystery guy, who had such a thick coat of paint, that I actually could only properly identify him once the paint was off. And he's a Blood Angel Death Company miniatures in Mk VI armour.
Warhammer 40,000 – Imperial Fists Call to Arms Pt 2
You read the introduction to the Imperial Fists. I provided an overview of the first 'MVP' of this army, and now I want to offer some additional insight into the lore behind it. Rather than simply painting these Space Marines as Imperial Fists, I will allocate them to the 3rd Company. I will explain why below.
As loyal Space Marines, we are going to recognise the Codex Astartes. As mentioned in the first article, we will use the Codex: Ultramarines for this project. And I will provide a brief overview of how Space Marine Chapters were organised after the Horus Heresy and before the Rubicon Primaris.
Back in the Age of Darkness, the Adeptus Astartes were organised into Legions known as the Legiones Astartes. There were 18 of them, each following their Primarchs, and they were much bigger than today's Chapters. These legions comprised between 100,000 and 250,000 armed Space Marines, and sometimes even more, as in the case of the Ultramarines and the Word Bearers. These legions were organised into Chapters, Companies and Squads. However, after the Horus Heresy, such concentrated power was deemed undesirable, so the Legions were broken into smaller Chapters of around 1,000 Space Marines. This explains why we talk about Chapters in 40k and Legions in 30k, and also why Chapters are more distinctive in 40k than in 30k (and less flexible).
Warhammer 40,000 – Imperial Fists Call to Arms Pt 1
Ladies and Gentlemen. Friends of the middle aged metal miniatures. I am happy to announce - We are starting with the first full project into the Warhammer 40k 2nd Edition!
We have a deadline, everything has to be battle ready on April 18th for the Chaosbunker Classics! We have an army, the Imperial Fists! And we have a rough scope for our Call to Arms! I do not have to paint my entire collection of Space Marines for this, but around 1,250 to 1,500 for our narrative event, which makes it more reasonable for a 3 month time frame.
Fortunately the hunt for this project is done. Meaning my earlier article series on sourcing old models, and I can concentrate on preparing, building and actually painting the miniatures. First beginning with sorting out roughly the amount of miniatures that I will need to fill the army.
But before that I grabbed a jar, filled it with paint stripper and separated the miniatures from their bases and plastic parts, to just strip the metal. You can strip metal with acetone or turpentine, but plastic and most kind of resins will be dissolved or turned into a gooey mess. Therefore if you have plastic or resin parts you want to clean, go for Isopropanol / IPA and moderate length, as you do not want the material to become brittle.
3d printing – a recap
My in-house 3D printing has come to an end, at least for the time being.
In March 2022, I bought a resin printer from Anycubic in an Easter sale, and now I would like to share a recap of my experience. First of all, thank you so much to Broncofish for the help at the beginning. This made the learning curve much steeper, with no major issues, which made it such a pleasant experience right from the start.
What were the costs over the last three and a half years? In total, I spent just under one thousand dollars on the 3D printer and consumables. Here is a detailed breakdown:
Mortal Gods – Behind the scenes of a battle report
Dino and I have been talking about some things and one partially type of content that I want to give a try are battle reports.
I like producing the reviews, but it takes up a lot of time and only fills the building part of the hobby pillars, where as battle reports are documented games, which means they provide for multiple of the hobby pillars, as you do have to assemble and paint the miniatures you need for your games, get to build terrain and have a game with them.
This means the upcoming battle report is a proof of concept, to get a feel for the work load involved, the scope we're going for and to see what we might need to produce content on the level we're aiming for. And not just for Mortal Gods, but for other systems you saw and will see on here as well.
First off all, in case of the Mortal Gods battle reports, a huge thank you not only to Dino for taking care of that game, with the great article series he wrote and magnificient looking miniatures, you can see on here, but to Robert of Wolpertinger Miniatures, as he supported Dino in building the demo table and greek buildings.
Mortal Gods – Building a gaming table
Since it had been clear for a while that we wanted to do a Mortal Gods batrep, but I simply didn't have the skills to build a board myself in such a short time, I did the only logical thing in this situation: I asked a specialist!
Robert, alias Wolpertinger Miniatures, offered to build me a tabletop board on the first weekend of August. I must admit, I had my doubts as to whether this was even possible in such a short time, but Robert persisted, and so I made ample use of his expertise.
To call him skilled is an understatement, and he had already completed the structural framework for half of the board before I even arrived at his place on Friday. We ended up building the other half together.
Mortal Gods – Objective Markers
In preparation of the upcoming demo table and battle reports on Mortal Gods I supported Dino by building some object markers.
I printed the base decoration elements from this set by Edinburgh Miniature Company and a chest from the A Ghostly Odyssey set by Loot Studios and grabbed some 40mm round bases by Warlord Games. Usually my go-to plastic bases are the flat ones by Renedra, but as I wanted to have the decoration immerse more into the ground, I went with the small lipped ones by Warlord.
In total I wanted to build nine objective markers, primarely used for Mortal Gods. You'll mostly be fine with six, but I just wanted to be sure and have a bit of variation depending on the scenario.
Mortal Gods – 3d printed scatter
Having access to a 3D printer is a huge asset in our hobby, and while mine was still set up, I used it for Mortal Gods as well.
Dino initially asked me for some pieces for his demo table, so I printed two statues for him. These are items that you can easily pick up for free on Cults.
Over time, demand for additional pieces grew, so I added a few more items to my print plate.
Blood Bowl – DeathZone Fantasy Football Stock
We talked about the initial six teams of Blood Bowls 3rd edition and how those are represented in my collection, now it is time to go further and look what DeathZone brings to the table (top).
DeathZone was the expansion for Blood Bowl, adding more complexity and options to the core game. And it did this for the first time in 1987, as well as for the 3rd edition in 1994 - this is the one we're talking about. Funnily enough, the '94 release even picks up some of the initial designs, for example spotting a huge minotaur on the cover. The most current edition of Blood Bowl got its DeathZone as well.
Just like the core game we get another batch of six different teams, and a lot - honestly, a looot - of new star players. Unlike the initial batch we do not get 3 "good" and 3 "evil" teams, but a variety of rather special rosters.
July 2025 review
Now that we have entered the third quarter of this year, let's take a quick look back at July. July saw some major events.
Unfortunately, the German Stormbringer subscription has come to an end. Thank you again to Hachette for supplying us with the issues for our coverage. We enjoyed writing about it and giving it a try.
However, we won't be covering Combat Patrol here. This is not because it is not an interesting magazine, but because a lot of the content has already been covered here, especially with the extensive Warhammer 40,000 Leviathan coverage. As the German edition is published after the international one, there is little novelty value from a content creator's point of view, and we would be referring our readers to articles we published in 2023.
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