I've been looking at 30k pretty intently. It seems like every other day I'm on the Forgeworld site looking at those gorgeous models, trying to justify the purchase. But even if I could do that, I would have no idea which Legion I want to start!
So I decided to embark on a little project that I think will be fun to do and cool to show people. I'm going to build and paint a marine from one of each of the main 18 Legions!
I bought one box of Space Marine Tacticals, and one box of Chaos Marines, and have already divvied out parts to create models that I think well-represent their legions like so:
Yep, I have one little baggy for each of the 18 Legions, plus one for Black Templar, and one for Crimson Slaughter, as the two extra supported chapters/warbands that GW seems to keep around. I've given each model a set of weapons and armor that I feel fits the theme of that chapter, like the Heavy Bolter to the Iron Warrior, and the Plasma gun to the Dark Angel, and of course the Flamer to the Salamander.
Next, to make sure I can put as much detail and work into these as possible, I assemble them sparsely and use a combination of a block of foam from wal-mart, paper clips, and picture-mounting sticky tack to assemble them like so:
This way, I can easily handle and paint each piece, and then glue them all together after they're all painted. The one here is my Raven Guard, since I figured ALL BLACK would be pretty easy to paint. For flavor, I gave this model the Corvus armor and beaky head, and put a scope on his bolter.
Currently, my selection of paints is pretty limited. I figure I can start off with the Raven Guard, Black Templar, Iron Warrior, and White Scar marines first. I prime them all gray, so whether I'm going lighter or darker, the difficulty will be about the same, and gray provides a nice medium so lighter colors shouldn't be too painful to work with.
I'll take more pics as I finish the Raven Guard. Unlike my Space Sharks, which I rushed to get done, I'm going to take my time on these, and may even try to freehand the chapter symbols.